Wednesday, November 24, 2021
Today was yet another day of nice weather. A cold front is supposed to move through tonight bringing rain and strong winds tomorrow. All in all, it looks like Thanksgiving 2021 will be a very cold and blustery day.
So the plan for today was to continue work on the walking rows in the garden. I had bought five more bags of mulch, and thought that would cover at least two rows. I seriously overestimated how much it would cover. I did the math and at $27.27 for five bags, it would end up costing me close to $300 to cover 10 walking rows! I told RAF that I felt guilty for spending money to put down that mulch, but he made me feel somewhat better by reminding me that I really never spend money on myself. I thought, "You know, he's right. I don't go out and buy clothes or shoes or spend money on hair or makeup (maybe he wishes I would! LOL)."
With the five bags and the cardboard that I got from my mom and dad, I was able to almost completely cover another walking row. I say "almost" because I ran out of cardboard and still had about three feet at the end to go. I think there will be enough of the mulch to cover it all...I'll just need to rake it down the row to the end once I get more cardboard. I did end up getting five more bags this afternoon. I'm not sure yet if I will use those to finish the first two rows that I started, or if I'll try to outline the short row to the left. Decisions, decisions, decisions!
There was also time today to work more in the flower beds. I dug up the Tall Goldenrod (Solidago altissima) and in its place, planted seeds of what is either Common Wrinkle-leaved Goldenrod (Solidago rugosa) or Elm-Leaved Goldenrod (Solidago ulmifolia).
The tall goldenrod is very beautiful in the fall when it's in bloom, but it really was overpowering in that flowerbed. The other kind is much shorter and should blend in well with the other flowers.
Common Wrinkle-leaved Goldenrod
I also worked on moving some more flowers out of the bed under the Willow Oak. Another butterfly milkweed and a green milkweed were relocated to the bed to hide the ugly stump (that flowerbed really needs a name). Four clumps of Rudbeckia that had come up in the yard were also relocated to that bed, and the tall goldenrod that was under the oak tree was moved into that bed, but on the other side of the fence. And yes, I ended up making the bed just a bit bigger to accommodate the new additions. I wonder how much bigger it's going to end up being when I'm finished with it!
Other than that, the rest of the outside work was pretty much just digging grass out of the flowerbeds. I didn't do a very good job of keeping them cleaned out last summer, so I have lots of that kind of work left to do. I'm not sure what work I'll be able to do the rest of the Thanksgiving break with the change in the weather.
Sunday, November 21, 2021
Yesterday was another nice November day so I thought I'd do a little more work on my raised rows. I cut all of the jalapeno pepper plants and marigolds out of the end of the first row and finished that one out. I also took down the panels for the green peas since the last one standing had been severed in two. Put in another raised row there and added a short on just to the north. I was pleased with how they turned out, but at the same time was so mad at myself and sad because in digging the dirt to move it from the walking rows, I killed two of my little toad friends who had hibernated in the dirt under the straw!
😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
I tried to make myself feel better by telling myself though that this is the last time I plan to ever do any digging like that. From now on they can burrow under the mulch or under the walking rows wherever they want and they won't be hit by the tiller or the hoe or a shovel. And to try to make up for killing those two I plan to go ahead with my idea of putting a little frog/toad pond in in the west part of the yard so they'll have a place to spawn or just hang out.
 |
| Four completed raised rows with one more partly finished. |
The plan for the afternoon is to get more cardboard from my mom and dad...they have stacks of used cardboard feed boxes from when they raised broilers for Tyson. I'm not sure exactly how that's going to work, because 1) the boxes are wider than my walking rows so will have to be cut or folded and 2) the boxes are DIRTY and stinky from having baby chicks pooping in them. But I'll get a few and see how it goes.
Before doing that though, I decided to get the little dogwood tree set out. I had two dogwood trees in pots last year that I had started from seed, but they both got downy mildew and before I knew what had happened, they both died! So this past spring, when I saw one about 3" tall that had come up volunteer under one of the red maple trees, I thought that was a sign...I was meant to have that one in my yard! It couldn't stay where it was though, so I decided to try to carefully dig it up and move it. But when I started digging, I hit maple roots and in trying to work around them, accidentally cut the taproot on the little dogwood. It had about an inch and a half of taproot left, with one little side root. That was it.
I really didn't think it would survive, but decided to go ahead and put it in some water to see what would happen. After about a week, it was still green, so I put it in some good potting soil and set the pot in some water. Low and behold, in about a month, it actually put out a new leaf, and before long, another. It spent about two months in the little pot, then I moved it into one of the plastic pots that had come from a local nursery several years ago (no idea what I bought but apparently I got something at some time! LOL)
Over the summer, it continued to grow, and is now about a foot tall. It looks like the leaves have a touch of the downy mildew on them, but it has good strong-looking buds, so I hope it will put out next spring. I was afraid its roots might freeze in the pot, so this afternoon I set it out in the front yard, mulched it well with leaves and compost, then put up a T-post and cage to protect it from the rabbits and deer. What a shame that the little trees have to have cages around them, but I've learned the hard way that rabbits and deer will just eat the new growth right out of top of a little tree, and darn it all, this one has already had a rough enough start as it is! I have read that a mixture of milk and water will kill downy mildew and I've also read that Neem oil can be used to kill it, so I'm going to keep a close eye on it next spring and try to spray at the first hint of trouble. So excited that maybe...just maybe...I will finally have a dogwood tree in the yard!
Wednesday, November 17, 2021
The wind blew the black plastic off the west side of the storm cellar so I spent about an hour working on the new strawberry bed. What a mess. With every chop of the hoe I was cursing myself for putting that Bermuda grass there. Why, oh why did I do that! I had a clean slate to work with and I ruined it! :(
But looking on the bright side, I think I've discovered a "brick mine" in the field west of the garden. I had found a few bricks there in the past, but it wasn't until RAF decided to mow around the fence on the pasture side that I really noticed a good sized "hump" in the field. It looks like at some point in the 141 year history of this old house that someone probably tore down one of the three chimneys (maybe two of them) and just piled the bricks out west of the house, leaving them to get covered with leaves and dirt and overgrown with grass. So far, I've dug up about a dozen full-sized bricks, and about that many more half-bricks. I hope I will eventually find enough to go all the way around the strawberry bed.
 |
| Old bricks from the "brick mine." |
Sunday, November 7, 2021
We finally had our first frost of the season this past week. The growing days for 2021 are coming to an end, but that just means it's time to start planning for spring 2022.
With that in mind, I worked a bit more on the "hide the ugly tree stump" flowerbed and finally got the bricks/rocks/old fence posts put around it. The Butterfly Milkweed plant (Asclepias tuberosa) in the south flowerbed put on some late blooms, and the seed pods finally opened. I went ahead and collected all of the seeds and planted a few more in the expanded flowerbed. I also relocated a butterfly milkweed plant from a flowerbed under the willow oak in the front yard to the expanded stump flowerbed - I hope it survives the move. That bed under the oak tree is just too dry in the summer (the tree sucks all of the moisture out of the ground) so I've decided to move everything out of that bed and just turn it back into yard. I have a number of purple coneflower plants that still need to be moved, as well as a Green Milkweed (Asclepias viridis) that I relocated from the cow pasture a couple of years ago. That poor plant...if it can "think" I'm sure it will be wishing I would just make up my mind where to put it already!