Cooler Weather, Yay!
Last week was a beautiful reprieve from the hot weather. I am sure it will be back soon but the forecast for this week is also going to be cool and I will take it for sure. When the days were so hot this summer it was hard to be in the garden past noon, but now with the cooler weather I am playing catch up with everything that had been put on hold.
So off the list is getting the tunnel cleaned out. When it had been so hot I didn’t even want to go in there because the temperature would have been close to double what it was outside. Not good. On Tuesday because it was cool and drizzly I spent the morning pulling weeds, which there were plenty of, and lifting out the ranunculus corms. The flowers that still looked good I have kept, but everything else is gone. Two tractor bucket loads of crap.
The rest of the week was spent weeding the poor willows and watering them. They look so stressed, but I will give them another deep drink this week and finally get some mulch on them which will really help. I also got that garden mowed so you can even see that there are plants in there. After that I watered the twiggery deeply and finished that weeding, then watered the the external gardens. It is so dry I feel as though I have done nothing but water. If we don’t get rain soon it will be really bad because I only have 650 gallons of water left in my big rain tank. That will only be another 3 big waterings. An inch of rain will go a long ways to filling the rain tank.
I did get some cover crop seed down on Tuesday in the drizzle, only wet enough to get my shoes soaking wet, not enough to get the soil damp, so I am now hand watering the seed so it will germinate. Argh.
Despite the dryness, the flowers are going gangbusters. I am harvesting lots and still have plenty, the insect life is amazing. The garden just hums with happy insects and birds.
I had a disaster Friday, to me anyway. I was liquid feeding the dahlias when my very tangled hose was NOT cooperating, and rather than putting the hose down, walking up the path to get it around the corner I yanked hard, and got the hose to where I wanted it, but…in the process I broke the corner stake and crushed three dahlia plants. I was soooo cranky with myself not to take the time. But, after I finished up, I disconnected everything and took the hose out of the garden and completely straightened it out in the sun and had it relax, then I nicely rolled it back up. A lesson learned? I would like to think so.
So I leave you with last week’s #windowframethursday. Another fun one to make and hopefully for you to enjoy.
It will be another week watering, mulching and harvesting flowers, so until next week, Allie, I dream of flowers…