If you can believe it........I'm building, yet, another flower garden and preparing a place off the patio for a hot tub. Gezzzzzzzzz think I could pick even hotter weather to do these things? Patience is not a virtue in the life of David!

OKC1--are you looking for a pat on the back or some BenGay?

Seriously, it sounds like you're pretty intense out there. I seem to accomplish the most when I'm supposed to be doing something else. I deadhead things when I walk by them and think "Yuck--that looks pretty sad..." and promptly forget what I set out to do and things become even more free-form after that.

Are you supposed to cut the bloom stalks off daylillies? HOw about the stalks on hostas after they bloom?

I finally scored a free plastic drum for a rainbarrel. Got the spigot put in and (hopefully) sealed on Friday, while listening for the ice cream mixer doing its thing. Hand-cranked tastes better, but I don't have the necessary uncles/cousins/etc. to take turns cranking.. I'll get the downspout rerouted Monday. Maybe someday we'll get some rain here and we'll see if it'll hold. Or how long it takes it to overflow--guess I better figure that part out, too.

The most important "chore" was picking a couple handfuls of strawberries to put on the afore-mentioned ice cream.

PLanted and mulched some high-dollar (50 cents apiece) russian sage in front of the crepe myrtle. we'll see if it survives.

Decided which branches to trim out of one of the birch trees so it's not blocking the sidewalk--the actual work will be done Monday morning assuming I can roust my "helper" out of her teenage slumber.

Are coneflowers supposed to be deadheaded?

Sprayed Thompson's on the new shed we put up in the spring. Eldest daughter is in charge of painting it this fall. She's been recruiting some of her friends for help. They seem to be leaning towards "The Scream" on one side of it and "Starry Summer Night" on one end. Who knows what the rest of it will look like. Don't figure it hurts anything to let them have some fun with it.

The butterfly bush is starting to blossom, but it sure is drab in just plain white. Guess I need to find some with colored blooms and mix in with the white...Always more to do or things to change...sure glad I don't take it all too seriously.

Oh to be young and/or able bodied again! I'm so envious of you folk who can DO things. The best I can do right now is water the tomatoes and cucumbers and pick same. Yesterday I found an absolute monster cucumber...no wonder that plant didn't seem to be bearing. Next year I'll trellis the cukes and maybe they'll be easier to find.

Weeding.
Weeding.
Weeding.

Oh, and did I mention weeding?

David,
I think you and I could take a page from Plaidthumb's approach. Why worry, garden while the ice cream freezes and then take a good, long, delicious break!
Hope you like your rain barrels as much as I enjoy mine, Plaidthumb.
I'll bet the girls are having a great time, too.
Takes me back to my youth, for sure.
My brother, Paul, got a job logging in the mountains between his junior and senior years of high school in 1968. Our folks gave him their old, faded pea green VW delivery van to take with him.
So we outfitted the inside with dad's old army writing desk stuffed with cooking gear, mom's old army down sleeping bag, and plenty of books.
Then, two days before he was to leave, we decided it needed a lick of paint on the outside.
So we went to the paint store and bought several abandoned cans of metal paint, all different colors of course, and started painting the backgrounds for what we figured would be magnificent fantasy scenes on both sides.
Unfortunately, the paint was drying fairly quickly and our brushes were turning into something more like concrete than car paint.
It took about a minute for us to hit on the bright idea of pouring several different colors of paint into mom's best pie tins and then only about 10 minutes to ever so carefully dribble the paint down the sides of the van.
It was a sight to behold, and a very groovy chick magnet, that brought new meaning to the lyrics of McArthur Park. That van really did look like a psycho-delic cake someone had left out in the rain!

Now all you guys need is rain! LOL. I think I overdid it this weekend. I weeded and mulched, and weeded and mulched some more. Finally got my 3 new clematis vines potted up into gal. containers, per advice from the clematis forum. Planted 3 marguarite sweet potatoe vines in my big planter out front (about 4' x 4'). It now holds achillea 'Moonshine', blue balloon flower, phlomis fruticosa, and purple basil. Kind of a nice combo. Planted my esperanza in the front bed so it could show off. Deadheaded my salvia and the other plant (why can't I recall the name? I just hate getting older and losing my memory). I found my little passion vine finally sticking it's little head up. I pulled up tons and tons and tons of ivy, as it was choking out my little hosta; cleaned the outside a/c vents with the hose; fertilized the dahlia and the formosa lilies; awoke to beautiful stargazer and other lilies just opening; cut back the catmint; watered, watered, watered; pineapple lily is starting to bloom.

Still need to plant my taro and pentas. Am patiently waiting for the tersas to come, and/or any flying butterfly or moth - still no eggs - still no cats. Sigh...

I do not spray, I have native plant material, and still no sign of the flutterbys, except for the cabbage whites, yellows, and one painted lady who flew threw the backyard one morning. Sigh......

I wish I could find someone who would really, really like to pull all of those rose of sharon seedlings......

Those are the other trees I'd really like to cut down.

Next weekend's plans - finish mulching beds, take the scuffle hoe to the crabgrass around the beds, put my paving stones around the beds, deadhead.....

Susan

A word about stalk removal for Plaidthumb.
You don't HAVE to remove dead flower stalks unless you want to.

There's at least two schools of thought.

Some folks say that the dead stalks slow down continued flower production, which I think is wrong unless there are seed pods forming on the stalks. Seed formation does take plant energy.

Some say let the stalks dry thoroughly and then take them off as they die.

I remove all the stalks because they start looking a little raggedy and because, once they've dried, and I water, leaving the stalks and any dead leaves around the crowns can cause mold and rot to set in and affect the entire plant.

So, I trim back the dry daylily and lambs' ear stalks and take dead leaves for cleanliness and aesthetics.

I don't find flowerless stems particularly attractive.

The lambs' ear flower stalks are beautiful so I leave them up until they quit flowering. But they reseed so prolifically that I cut them back rather than weed the seedlings later.

A word of advice. Unless you want lots, and lots, and lots of lambs' ears, don't add those seed stalks to your compost pile. They will survive and you will have lambs' ears EVERYWHERE!

We had about a 3Â tall elevated deck on the back of the house. 90% of it is gone now. IÂll finish the rest of it when it gets cooler. There is an old spa on that part of the deck IÂm going to have to cut into pieces with a chainsaw to be able to move it. Then I can finish demolition on the deck.

The deck had very large crape myrtles on two sides. I cut them down to stumps and hit them with roundup after they leafed back out a few weeks ago.

Now itÂs the backbreaking job of digging around and chopping up with an axe to get pieces of the root system small enough to pry out of the ground. IÂve thought about using my truck to yank them out.

I want low growing items in the beds to allow a view from the living room and porch of our yard. IÂm going to love it when itÂs completed.

randy

Like Owie, I am weeding, weeding, weeding. Also mulching, mulching and mulching. Mowing, weed-eating, pruning, trimming, etc. Watching the sky for rain, but none ever falls! I've been deadheading my flowers daily to keep everything in bloom for as long as possible. I've been harvesting items from the veggie garden daily, which then leads to washing, sorting, cutting, chopping, canning, cooking, freezing, eating and giving stuff away to friends and neighbors. Last week I hauled about 20 5-gallon pails of finished compost to a new flower bed I am building. It is about 45 feet long and 12 feet wide, with a 3 foot path that meanders through it. Then I planted small zinnia and cosmos transplants in that area. (The hardest part was removing the bermuda grass sod.) Little by little, though, I am going to keep removing bermuda grass and keep building beds until we have lots of trees, shrubs, ground covers and perennials and NO bermuda grass. I won't get it all done this year or next, but I am getting there slowly.

This weekend I planted 4 flowerboxes to go under the windows of the new chicken coop. Beginning today, I am going to weed all the beds around the house and add mulch where needed. They've been neglected while the veggie garden and flower border get almost all the attention.

And, it is about time to start veggie seedlings for the fall garden. That's about it.

Dawn

Hey, Randy - why don't you turn that spa into a bog garden? Just a suggestion, I'm sure you already have plans for the space you're creating.

Susan