I made it out into the garden again! and the weather was decent!! Despite having picked up a chest cold last weekend, I was able to sped some time in the rose garden today. The weather cooperated and was sunny with a high of 59 degrees. I spent about 30 minutes doing stuff Saturday morning and about 2.5 hours Saturday afternoon.
On Friday, I was looking at the weather forecast for the next week and was a little sad to see that we are going to get some freezing temperatures at night over the next couple of days. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised give that is almost Thanksgiving but the freezing temperatures just seem to sneak up on me. So… time to undo the watering setup and disconnect the hose timers. Maybe this will be the year that I won’t loose a timer or y-connector or the like. That would be a first! This morning I disconnected the hoses to the main rose beds and dragged them out to drain. I also disconnected the 4-way manifold thing and, of course, automatic hose timer as well. All the little bits are drained and put in the bin in the workshop. I also removed the timer from the faucet on the south side of the house that controls the flow to all the potted bushed by the kitchen door. This was tougher than it sounds because the Cherokee Rose has surrounded the faucet area and I have to reach into the very prickly bush to turn the water on and off (and disconnect hoses). I chose to just remove the timer and reconnect the hose directly to the faucet so I can still water all those plants manually (though I risk the rose bites reaching into and through tangle of rose bush. I guess having the rose growing in front of/covering the faucet is probably not the best plan.)
In the afternoon on Saturday, I was able to apply lime to the bed with the OGRs in it. I found that my digital kitchen scale has a capacity of 10 lbs. and also is much easier to tare than the bathroom scale. It is also a lot easier to read. I used a plastic pitcher to measure the lime in 4 lb lots, dumping each lot into the litter bucket which I then used a one qt cottage cheese container to scoop out and scatter with. This time I tried to be a little more sparing when I started scattering so that I had to go over the whole bed twice. I think I got it a lot more even than when I was applying to the bed along the fence. Once it was all distributed, I pulled up the soaker hose and used a hoe and dirt rake to work it into the soil. Once I put the soaker hose back in place, I then use a spray handle on a supply hose to soak the soil and start the breakdown of the pellets of lime.
On to the central diamond-shaped bed with the Souvenir dela Malmaison. I had started weeding this bed two weeks ago and had gotten about 3/4 of it done. I finished weeding then spent some time cutting out dead canes. There is also a The Fairy on this bed that I needed to cut back as well. Since the sun was still shining (though getting closer to the horizon), I applied and worked lime into the soil. Yet another bed done!!
At this point, the sun was now down but there was still some light so I took a crack at weeding the bed with the irises in it. What I quickly determined was that most of the weeds in the area I was working (which was the end near the point, where the bearded irises were) were actually growing in the pots that contained the Rosa Mundi salvaged from the “Jungle Bed”. I manage to clear out the weeds in these pots but found that only two pots had surviving Rosa Mundi plants. Hey I tried… As it was, I only got about half of this bed weeded before I got the the point where I was starting to have trouble seeing what I was trying to pull up.
So… Two beds left to weed then lime, if I don’t count the jungle bed. It is also the right time to get the “Replace the landscape timbers” project back into gear.
That’s all for now.