Notes From Zone 4

We had such a busy day today. Frank had a few things that he really wanted to get done out there, and it all got accomplished in about five hours worth of work.

First off, he needed to get the new chipper out of the back of the truck. I really didn’t want it backed up onto the deck like the sawmill, even though that would have been easier. He rigged up some wood planks into a ramp, and it took four of us to sort of walk it down the ramp. Now he can just back the tractor up, attached it to the back, and cart it off properly.

Then he wanted to mount my new Mother’s Day gift, a weather station, to the roof of the house. This thing will keep track of the temperature, the humidity, the barometer, the wind speed, etc. Some day soon I hope to download it directly to this garden journal, as well as report our data to the national weather service so that they can more accurately list our USDA Horticultural Zone.

The shots of the garden that were taken from up there on the roof are wonderful! I hate heights, though, so I stayed down on the ground and continued my garden clean-up. I finished from the start of the path behind the waterfall to the gazebo, which was my goal. I still had about an hour before we had to leave, so I made it down the back side of the stream and up again, which I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do.

What I mostly cleaned up today were the irises. I want it on record that cleaning up the irises is much more time consuming that most of the other flower beds. Their old foliage doesn’t just come off by pulling, it has to be cut off with pruners. I didn’t run into any today that need to be split this year, though Frank tells me that the yellow iris are ready to split.

I think the other thing that he’d wanted to get done was to repair the hole in the irrigation from his pitchfork from last weekend, and that got done too.

I have probably one more solid day’s work out there cleaning up the last of the beds. What’s left is the entire back side of the gazebo bed, which has some rampant mums that need to get out of there. I worked all day in my bug suit, and it was okay, but I had swarms of bugs around me. They are definitely getting worse.

I’m pleased to announce another addition to the vast Richards web-empire: In my personal pages at www.therichards.org there’s now another Moveable Type journal, covering the boozing we do wines we enjoy. Curmudgeon that I am it will also cover the ones we drink but don’t enjoy, and the ones that are ok, but not as good as something else that costs the same or less.

Gratuitous shot of Marmalade, the Mighty Hunter, out in the garden.