Monday, Jun. 14, 2004 – 6:36 p.m.
2004-06-14 6:36
Long overdue
Week before last, I actually got out to the garden for a while on Wednesday morning. My primary purpose was to deadhead. Pretty much I had not deadheaded at ALL this year, yet. Boy did the garden need it. I also noticed two other things right off: I also needed to WEED; and the japanese beetles had arrived. The first rose I went to had them. In some ways, the lack of deadheading had helped… there were not many blooms for them to eat. I found a total of 5 in the garden. That doesn’t mean there weren’t more some place but I didn’t find any more. I did, however, grab a jar with soapy water to deal with them.
After I did a scan through looking for the beetles, I went and grabbed a trashcan in which to put the deadheaded/pruned pieces and the weeds I pulled. As it was, I got through about three beds, deadheaded and pulled the major weeds. It still took more time than I had allocated so I didn’t get to the other three beds. Oh well.
Guilty
[sigh] I am so ashamed…. after railing against places like Home Depot and Lowes, I found that I had neglected several of the new roses I bought from Sherando Roses back in April. That’s right, I am guilty of Rose Abuse. I had set the Autumn Damask, Tuscany and Tuscany Superb in one of the beds then forgot about them. Didn’t hook them up in the watering system or anything. Being in 1 gallon black pots, they tended to dry out pretty quickly. The Autumn Damask was the first one I noticed. That should have been my hint to look at the others. I watered it and put it in a place out of direct sun until I could get the water rigged. It was several days later than I noticed the two gallicas. Yikes! On one the leaves had pretty much dried out it was so parched. They too got moved out of the direct sun and watered several times. I definitely needed to rig up some new/additional water stuff.
Last year, I had bought a mini-soaker hose kit at Walmart. This uses 1/4″ tubing to distribute the water and the kit had 10′ of distribution tubing and about 25′ of “soaker hose” with connectors that allowed you to cut it to length, make multiple connections (using T connectors) and little plugs for the ends. I had actually purchases additional soaker hose (another 50′ of the little hose), more connectors and a second hose adapter. This meant that I could actually run it in two flower beds (I also had some additional “Y” connectors). I was able to connect together and run mini soaker hose to all the pots I had not serviced before. It worked great! This works even better than the sure-flo emitters I had gotten from Witherspoon. Those use regular hose that you have to drill holes in; This was SO much easier and the stuff is inexpensive enough that I can reconfigure pretty easily. Now I just need to find the time.
As for the abused bushes, I also buried the pots of the two gallicas in the ground. That should keep the roots from getting hot and should help keep them from drying out. After a week of the new care, there are little buds on a lot of the canes of the one that had suffered the worst. i think they should survive.
Moving furniture
One of the reasons I have not gotten out to the garden very much recently was I was getting the house back in order. The new carpet was installed two weeks ago and prior to that, I was packing stuff up. After it was put in, I decided that was going to change where stuff was in the upstairs. Before, the computer was in the front, smaller bedroom, and the guest bed was in the back bedroom where all the bookshelves were. I decided to move the guest bed into the front bedroom and put the desk and computer back in the “study”. Figuring out how to arange the guest bed was pretty easy. Arranging the study, on the other hand, took a lot more thought. I actually measured everything and plugged it into MS-Visio so I could look at different configurations.
For a while now, I have had the idea of putting a futon couch in the study, using my existing queen-size futon mattress (of course, I would also have to get a new mattress for me since I currently sleep on the futon.) A good excuse to build myself a 4-poster bed! Ok, that isn’t going to happen very soon. However, I figured I could at least “reserve” the wall space for the couch and make sure there was enough floor space for it to fold out. [sigh] I just couldn’t get it to work and still have all of the existing stuff in the room. Oh well. It’s not like I don’t have a guest bedroom right now anyway and, gee, the couch downstairs folds out into a bed as well… It was a good idea while it lasted….
Interior Design is not my Forte
Once the futon couch was out of the picture, I realized that I really needed a better computer desk. I looked at a number of different designs and decided that, while a computer armoire is an interesting idea, it is too cramped for me. My primary activity in the study is using the computer so why hide it in a cabinet? If it was downstairs in the living or dining room, such a thing would make sense, but not here. I finally settled on a desk but when I went to look at it, it was really small. The model I was looking at was really a student computer desk, more appropriate for a dorm room or the like. The place did have another one that was bigger and it was on sale too… so I got it (quite literally…. the only one they had left was the floor model….)
Playing with the Visio drawing, it seemed to fit. When I got it home, it did fit. However, the room just doesn’t look right. It looks very cobbled-together. Back to the drawing board…. Oh, I also found out that Storehouse doesn’t make the white bookcases anymore. Now I need to find a different source for them if I want to expand my shelf space and maintain the same appearance.
Next time, Roses in the mountains…