Archives for October 2021

I have been taking my houseplants back into the house, and getting the tropicals and succulents into the workshop. I am pretty diligent about replanting most into fresh potting soil, and spraying for bugs.

However, I missed a few critters apparently.

This large toad was sitting calmly among the plants. I continued working around him, stacking pots and tidying up, when I was surprised by this guy!

A small garter snake. I tried to direct him with a branch, but he was intent on hiding in the shelves and pots. That evening Doug took the toad out, but the snake was nowhere to be found. The next morning, he showed himself, and he was still cold and sluggish, so it was easy to get him to the door and outside.

I guess I need to more careful when I bring the pots inside next year! I just hope I didn’t bring toads or snakes into the house!

This was the first summer to plant the circular bed around Celena, our new statue. It was a good growing season, and the cleome really grew!

Yea, so high that we couldn’t see Celena anymore!

Time to clean out the bed because I wanted to fill it with Daffodils for next spring. I first cut down all the stalks so I was just left with much more manageable stems to pull out.

Weeded, and cleaned up.

A few weeks later, and a lot of rain later, the bed needed to be loosened up and given a quick tilling.

I marked out the lines where I want to plant straight rows of marigolds next summer.

I had a LOT of bulbs, dug up from here and there, where they were overcrowded.

And I found this dibber when I cleaned out the trunk earlier this summer.

I just threw handfuls of the bulbs on the ground, trying to make sure there were some big ones in every section.

The soil was nice and loose, and the dibber worked pretty well, so I got them all in the ground in short order. Tamped them all in. Some rain is coming and that will be just the thing to help them get settled before winter.

Next summer, I hope to plant marigolds and blue salvia. Much shorter plants!