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KathieB's Garden Blog, Georgia edition :)


KathieB

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1 hour ago, KathieB said:

New post ... the mulch delivered!

You Load Sixteen Tons ...

Anybody else remember Tennessee Ernie Ford? :) 

I remember an early Ford commercial was an animated figure saying a long, drawn-out "F O R D" while the mouth made the shape of the letters, and one night the ol' pea-picker said the following punchline:  "Here comes F o r d in a D o d g e."

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Dry air is supposed to move in tomorrow. Meanwhile, the ground has been kept so wet with daily downpours that it is not a good idea to try to work or even walk in the yard. I can just imagine the red clay compacting and drying to concrete if stepped on. I'm seriously thinking of advertising on Nextdoor.com for someone to help me catch up on weeding and mulch spreading. 

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I did advertise on Nextdoor.com and got three responses. One, a high school girl, faded when she learned she'd have to be here by 8 am, while the day is still cool. One fellow who came to give an estimate said he couldn't get to it for a few weeks, but I'd checked out his Facebook page and was impressed by his construction work; he will give me a quote for screening in my little back porch area. The third guy came with his buddy. Once I got it through his head that he'd have to divorce his weed whacker and do a fair amount of hand work, they put their heads together and quoted $80 to weed, ditch the edges, and spread the mulch. I talked him up to $120. :D So Bobby and Johnny will be here today at 8 am.

Bobby told me about the pre-emergent granules, which have been around for a quarter century but totally eluded me. I went to Home Depot and got some Roundup and Preen. The Preen (pre-emergent) will be sprinkled over the area before laying the mulch. The Roundup will be used on any weeds that dare to break through the mulch as the season progresses.

Two of the paulownia trees are showing leaf curl. They don't look healthy. Will keep an eye on them. The third paulownia, from a different nursery, is growing well. It has about doubled in size. If the two sickly trees succumb, I'll get replacements from the nursery that shipped the healthy plants. :) The rose of sharon that isn't doing well is still putting out micro leaflets, so it's not dead, but not thriving, either.  

The roofing company rep came by to do the final inspection. He tweaked a couple of things, took down the wires from the defunct Dish dish that they removed at my request, and got stung by a wasp that was beginning a nest on the back porch. I got some wasp and hornet spray and evicted budding nests by both front and back doors at dusk.

Aaaahhhh, summer!

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The Kid is a fairly heavy smoker (he cuts 'way back when he's here) and our screened back porch becomes his smoking room when he visits, although if the weather's decent he takes it outside when it's pretty; he has already identified our wasp nests-in-the-building and has laid plans for removing them (without getting stung).

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I'm inside taking a cool-down/hydration break. We've been at it for more than 2 hours. Making headway. The temp is about 70, but the sun is powerful, and the only long-sleeved shirt I'm willing to sacrifice to gardening sweat is navy blue, which doesn't help. Started out with two guys. They finished one area around the 2 forsythia bushes. Looks nice mulched. Then one took off to check on some other job, leaving young Brandon to work on the bushes behind the island. I, meanwhile, have freed the single forsythia from its leafy prison of quack grass. Took me most of the 2 hours. Can't wait to take pictures of the finished bits this afternoon. :) 

Meanwhile, I'm thinking the 7 and 11 year olds across the street may want to earn some Dairy Queen cash deadheading the balloon flowers. As beautiful as they are, masses of purple blooms, the ones that have faded to a grayish white really don't enhance the overall effect.

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9 hours ago, havanaholly said:

I'm enjoying your gardening blog.  I have a brown thumb.

 

24 minutes ago, WestPaces said:

Me too Holly, on both accounts :)

You are both welcome to come on over any time. Sit, sip, and enjoy the garden while I enjoy your company. :) 

I went out early this morning to water and enjoyed the peace. Supposed to get up to 90 today, so another inside day, but muscles are nearly back to normal, so probably will spread more mulch tomorrow. 

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My thumb is brown, not black, so some things will grow in spite of my over attentiveness or total neglect; just usually not the ones I want to plant.  Although the jalapenos did just fine & dandy until the deer ate them, and our native azalea was going great guns until the neighbor mowing our yard decided to include them in his path (that was the LAST time we asked him to mow our yard).

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  • 4 weeks later...

A trick I learned with hydrangeas from an article in a very old issue of Southern Living; have a bag of potting soil handy and poke it full of holes on one side.  As you prune your hydrangeas, strip the lower two or three courses of leaves off and tick the cane down one of the holes into the potting soil.  Run water from the hose into one of the holes and set the bag next to your pruned hydrandea; in a few weeks you ought to have rooted cuttings ready to plant.  I did this at our Havana house.  Interesting side note, the hydrangea I pruned had borne blue flowers.  I planted the new ones near our front porch and the soil must have had a lower pH because their flowers were pink.

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28 minutes ago, havanaholly said:

A trick I learned with hydrangeas . . .

Might have to try this. It would be nice to have a row of them along the side of the house to make it less barren and also help prevent erosion (the ground on that side slopes away from the house at a pretty steep angle).

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

The August Update is on line. Find out how I solved the problem of the toxic ground that killed two Rose of Sharon bushes. :D 

The big news is what's happening next week: work will begin on the screened porch. Can't wait to be able to sit outside with a modicum of privacy.

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Has anyone figured out why that particular patch of ground is so toxic?  Your bottle tree looks great there, and will be a nice spot of color when winter dries everything up & turns things brown.  You have pigeons, we have deer.

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If memory serves me right, marigolds are planted around vegetable gardens to keep rabbits out.   

We have 4 hummingbird feeders and one little bird seems to think all of them are his.

I have an electrical cord on a shelf on the front of the house to keep small birds from building a nest.  Works like a charm.

 

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