Apparently the rain will hold off until the afternoon; another atmospheric river is due tomorrow. With longer and milder days, I am back to working in the garden for an hour or so before breakfast.
I removed the larger weeds from widest section of the front slope garden. I applied Roundup on the invasive ground covers and fine feathery plants, digging out around existing plants to avoid collateral damage. Clearing weeds is meant to prepare the ground for mulching – in a week or two I will turn over whatever remains, soak the ground and mulch away.
I laid the pink vinyl edging on the far side of the flagstones at the east end of the back yard. Water runoff has eroded or washed away the decomposed granite between the stones closest to the downward slope edge. The spikes did not settle in even with repeated hammering. I added bricks to shore up the edging; further support may need to wait for the topsoil fill and the new bed just beyond the flagstones. I added Paver Set to the eroded areas and topped with existing decomposed granite for color
I weeded the corner of the triangle garden nearest the rain barrel. To my surprise and delight purple and white melissas seem to be self-starting in the far neglected end of that garden.
On the way out to Lowe’s I brought the watering can and applied Quick Start to the new plantings in the circle garden at the barn. I returned from Lowe’s with three cubic feet of raised bed soil and planted the calendula box at the end of the day.
At the end of the summer Gerry used to collect the dried seeds from the spent blooms. He had jars full of those seeds. I expect to turn the seeds over into the bed, hopefully to propagate.
Several months ago Mike brought his chipper up to the wood pile and created a generous mound of shredded mulch. I have supplemented the mulch with coffee grounds and leaf mold from the gutters since then. The first mulching was on either side of the calendula box, those areas of the upper front garden that have the shallowest and poorest soil and that receive the most hours of sun during the day.
A Year at the Snake 