Notes for May 15, 2008

Last night I planted 19 blades of Iris, 2 Sedums, 2 Geraniums and one red Spiderwort. I also planted some annuals into flower pots for the front steps. I moved the red Rhododendron to a place where I am thinking of planting it and then outlined a small garden around it with some edging I had leftover. I finished at 8:20 and it wouldn't have been so dark and it not been cloudy.

My Bleeding Heart plant is doing well. I have a white one and since its doing well in my yard, I am thinking of getting more.

I have four more dead trees in my yard, two are small and all the way in the back, and the other two I am thinking of having cut down.

This morning's temperature was in the 50's and cloudy. I also did hear the crop duster spraying somewhere nearby (I suspect for gypsy moths). He got my place yesterday as evidenced by the white spots all over my car.

I probably won't work outside again until Saturday and if the weather cooperates I am planning on making trips to the horse farm for manure. Unfortunately I don't have a truck so I load it into 5 gallon buckets and put them in my car (or the wife's van). I am also probably going to place my seedlings from under the light into the back yard. This is the weekend I like to plant my tomatoes and peppers but it doesn't look like that's going to happen this year. If I get the manure on Saturday then I will plant any and every evening I get a chance to in the week.

Notes for May 14, 2008

Again it was 38 degrees F this morning and was awakened to crop dusters spraying for gypsy moths (5:30 AM). My car is covered in white specks. I am complaining about it being cold in the morning and yet my northern friend I think is still waiting for snow to melt?

There is a woman from church of retirement age who has a perennial flower business. The Iris are starting to bloom and so I stopped by her place. I bought a bunch (about 18 stalks) of Iris, two Sedums (large variety), two hardy Geraniums and a red (more like fuscia) Spiderwort. I plan on planting them tonight.

It was a nice sunny day yesterday and its supposed to be today and even warmer (low 70s). Hopefully it will be enough to get my green beans to germinate. I looked at them last night and it looks like they will today (anyone who has planted green beans will know that when they start to break out of their seeds the ground cracks and last night I saw that the ground had started to crack).

Notes for October 3, 2007

No we still haven't had any rain in a while. In the past week there was two chances and in each case it disappeared from the forecast the day before. Now its October and we're back in the 80's again. I don't think the next chance for rain is until next week.

I was thinking this morning that in the fall I dislike the lack of daylight in the evening. It forces me to become a weekend warrior in the garden. I don't get a chance to take care of the little things during the week and I have to do everything on the weekend.

In the town that I live in, we don't have leaf pick up. I've been mulching up my leaves and leaving them in place for the past several years. This year I am going to bag as much as I can to put in my compost piles that I use for mulch every Spring and Summer. Now that I have additional flower beds, I need more mulch. If I don't get as much as I want from my own yard. I may put an ad out that I want bags of leaves. My newest neighbor put out bags of leaves in the trash last year before he realized that they don't get picked up to go to the landfill. So I took them off his hands and mulched them up. This was especially helpful to me because the gypsy moths hit my yard hard last year and I had very little leaves. This year they sprayed for the moths and my yard was spared. However, I have lost several small to medium sized oaks to the carpenter ant (the trees were weakened by the moths last years, or so I suppose).