What have you done today in the Garden?

When we lived in Washington State my granddaughter's best friend was from Ukraine. I helped her mom with her ESL class and she taught me Russian. Some words were the same. But the one that I thought was weird was chai. My favorite drink is chai tea. In Russian chai means tea so whenever I look at my concentrate box it says original chai tea. In other words it's original tea tea. I have dropped the tea since learning that and just say chai. The word my granddaughter thought was so funny was (and I'm spelling it from sound) butiak (pronounced boo-tee-ak) and it means beets. We moved here in December of her 3rd grade year and she had just turned 10 a month before. So I guess at that age anything that sounds like it has to do with your rear is funny. Kids.....

I did nothing in the garden. The first thing that I do when I wake up is ask Alexa what the weather is. She told me it was raining! Usually I can hear it. So I went and looked out the door and sure enough it was raining! So I went to the bank and the farmer's market. I didn't grow pickling cucumbers this year they are so prolific I can't use them all! So I bought some, enough for A (meaning 1) batch of pickles. Tomorrow I will be pickling. I have to go to Penzeys and get celery seed....I have every other seed except for that one. Weird that I don't have it.

 

DhR, I have sweet woodruff like that. I t has little white flowers and spreads. It is the first thing to bloom in the spring and it has a vanilla scent. I love it.

 

Thank you @Willowisp0801 it's a 6 weeks in plaster, got to try and pot on my wallflower plants, hubby wants to help but i know what to do, can't fit any gloves over the plaster so i don't know how it's going to turn out.

 

I did quite a bit this morning.
First job was to sharpen the blade on my Flymo.





These are easy to remove as there's just one bolt that secures it.
This mower is over 10 years old and it's the original blade.

I sharpen it every year. The way I do it is to put the blade in the vice on my bench and use a hand held electric belt sander. No more than a couple of minutes for each end. They do occasionally get tiny nicks in them when they've hit a stone, but they polish out quite nicely.

I then mowed the lawn and then got my scarifier out and gave it a good go over. The thatch was worse in some places than others. I must have removed over half a bin-full of thatch.
I then went over it again with the mower. Although it's had, "a damn good seeing to," it doesn't look too bad. It's had a dose of feed and moss kill. It will soon recover.





I extricated the support post from the mimosa. That took some doing, as the plastic tree-ties I'd used had got very tight and were hard to undo, but I wanted to use them again. The support wires are threaded through the ties, not around the trunk.
I took the opportunity to straighten it up a bit as it wants to lean a bit to the left.




I pruned the roses, the cleared all the leaf debris with my garden vacs, (one blows, one sucks), then gave the roses a dose of Sulphur Rose and the main patio one of, "Wet n' Forget."

Then it was lunch and watch the cricket and golf on TV.

 

Third batch of pea pods....I don't know why they look yellow in the picture, they really are green.



I have pickles sitting in ice and salt.They'll be canned by the end of the night. I couldn't start them until later because Penzeys didn't open until later. I could have started them before they opened but I thought what if, for some obscure reason they didn't open today. So I waited.

 

I didn't do a thing besides spin my composter a few times. Heat index was 109°f, I melted just hanging out and retreiving two loads of laundry !!

I have to water tonight or early in the morning, one.

 

DHR the lawn is spiffy … you put a lot and energy into your garden and it always looks so profesh…my goodness the mimosa is growing tall to reach the light soon it will fill in. They are beautiful trees with laughing plumes that dance in the wind and delicate fern like leaves. A nice contrast tree in the garden.

I was up on the roof this morning clipping the wisterias again… popped quite a few pine needles down the scuppers and drain spouts. Used the battery op blower to remove the rest of the debris off the roof.

snapped a pic of the mimosa in full bloom..it’s a messy tree but worth the hassle. The hummers hang out on their fav tree for sweet treats.
and a pic of the valley from the roof. And a few of the garden..


Valley from the roof


Wisteria clipped


Just more pics from the roof/


The pastures all done last cut of the season.

 

Spectacular pic from the roof @Pacnorwest and that Mimosa is just gorgeous !!

 

@Anniekay , you can use ordinary Borax on ant/termite hills.

One must be very very careful if you use gasoline.

This is my new tunnel for tomatoes, beans and cukes. I planted some yard long beans with the tomatoes, and some bush cukes to the left of the tunnel. The onions did not do this year. I put a few more scarlet runner beans in another spot today also.



My birdhouse gourds and pumpkins a few weeks ago. They are about 4 times as big now, and going crazy everywhere.





My elephant garlics when harvested. The leaves are dried out now, so I will remove them soon. The little dish is seeds for more garlic.



My new asparagus bed recently also.

Other things are doing well also.

 

Looking great nightowl. Liv the tomato cage. Great idea.

 

‘thanks ..

 

Nothing yesterday ,we went on a 3 mile circular walk in the morning and a friend visited ( + his cute little dog) in the afternoon. Out and about today so probably only watering tonight.

 

Nightowl— it looks really good there. I liked everything about your posting. The new tunnel, the harvest and that lovely white pony. ohhhhh, what an enjoyable posting.

Pac— wonderful pics of your environs. It always is such a pleasure.
You really did a job on that Wisteria.

 

My "pony" is actually a palomino quarter horse. Palomino means she is yellow, but I guess she looks white in the picture. Thanks. She is a very nice horse. I am still working on the weeding out there. I got way behind on that chore again.

 

Your Pally , in that pic, reminds me a lot of my Mule Millie. She looks white but she's an Appy mule and has small brown spots here and there and pink skin with black spots but you only see the black spots in her skin if she's wet.

Her Christmas pic.