RE: Where is everyone? Outside?

I just got over a bad cold too. Sure saps your energy.
I did make it out into the garden finally. The weekend started nicely
with rain, I woke up about 1:30 am on Saturday hearing the rain come off
the roof and it lasted until about 6:30. Wish I'd had the rain gauge
out, we might have gotten a half inch or so. Wonderful to hear water
again.
Later in the day it was calm and warm, husband said he felt like
tackling the front yard and asked me to point out what I wanted cleared.
So I did and then I figured gardening was better than house-cleaning so
we started digging grass. What a chore, it is all overgrown around the
sycamores and very hard to get a shovel in there to dig it up, too many
tree roots. But we cleared maybe a 6' square area. There's still grass
roots in there and I'm very afraid we will have to clear it with
Round-up eventually, but we'll see.
I used to have a beautiful little patch of veronica liwanensis in there
but it got smothered last winter by all the grass. I might buy some more
to put in the teahouse garden, I hope it will grow there. However I am
concerned because a lot of the woolly thyme I put in the teahouse area
about three years ago is now dying out and I don't know why.
Sunday was a really nice day too, after I came back from my morning hike
and we finished chores around the animal pens I tackled the front yard
again. Not quite as much energy this time so I gave up on the area
around the sycamore and went to the spot by the garage where weeds took
over the bare spot we made last year. Easy digging but oh my, we are
going to have weed problems there forever now. That's what neglect does
for you. There is some awful weird invasive grass in there, plus
crabgrass gone to seed, and sheep sorrel. But no sandspur, which is why
we dug it out in the first place, that's good. The soil is incredible, I
dumped about 10 wheelbarrows of sheep poo trying to smother everything
and it has composted really well. The smothering would have worked if we
hadn't waited so long to replant - but the weeds all grew on top of the
mulch. Anyway I cleared a big swath of that and by then all the waste
containers were full. Only about 150 feet left to go...
I still have little idea what I'm going to do in the front yard.
Something different has to happen because not only do I not have time to
take care of what I've got, if we don't get huge amounts of rain and
snow in California this winter, the water available to our neighborhood
is going to get cut dramatically, more than 50% perhaps. I could just
stop watering and let survival of the fittest take over... I have a
glimmer of a vision involving a sparser look with some rocks and more
Mediterranean plants but it's pretty vague at this point, mostly because
I can't envision what should go under the sycamores. And speaking of
them, I think a gardener to keep the sycamore leaves picked up during
the winter would help, that would take care of a huge time sink for me.


Cyndi


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-gardenchat@hort.net [o*@hort.net] On
Behalf Of Theresa W
Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2007 3:46 PM
To: gardenchat@hort.net
Subject: [CHAT] Where is everyone? Outside?

Very quiet the last couple of days- and i'm stuck inside with an upper
respiratory infection.  So, what have the rest of you been doing? I'm in

need of a little vicarious garden time.

Theresa

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