On Saturday morning it was very foggy when I pulled the shades up. I wasn’t moving too fast, as I did too much on Friday.
In the spare room there’s a high awning window to allow cross flow of air in summer. But there’s no view at all, just this.
I took this photo of the New Herb garden in the morning as I knew I’d forget to later. My general helper was coming at 12:30PM and we planned to tackle this garden.
I didn’t do anything all morning beside chores, just rested. It was to be the warmest day, near 60F, but it never got that high due to the fog, which burned off around 10:30AM.
She arrived at 12:30PM and got started cutting down all the tall stuff. I was going to sit and clean out the beds and walkways.
In the 2nd walkway, I found this Johnny Jump-up, aka heartsease, and it had 3 flowers on it. I had noticed the pansies in the box under the farm sign were still alive also.
My helper had said the rosemary looked alive and had left it. When I got to it in my weeding, it really did look alive. There was a bit of red cast, but I was amazed it had survived the -12F we had back in January. This one looked the best. The one on the left wasn’t quite as good.
There were quite a lot of plants that were still green and growing:
Tansy
Wormwood
Woad
Spearmint
Soapwort
Chicory
Echinacea paradoxa
Sage
Winter Savory
Some of the thyme
Yarrow
Oregano
Marjoram
Chamomile
I’d expect the sage, and maybe the wormwood, but most of the others either died back or were treated as annuals, such as the chamomile.
These are the 1st two rows after weeding. I got 2½ rows and 2 walkways cleaned up. If you look on the far right, you can see where the invasive greenery wasn’t removed on the north half of Row 3. That was the stuff I was after. It’s been growing all winter.
My helper friend had started the cutting of tall stuff back in October, but only got a few things done before he got sick. My general helper even dug up that enormous sneezeweed at the end of Row 4. That was an experiment gone wrong last year.
My general helper worked for 4½ hours and got all the tall stuff cut down. You can see the invasive stuff throughout the garden. But at least I made a start on it.
We have cold coming in after rain on Saturday night and then on Tuesday they are threatening 6” - 12” of snow. So I am glad I was able to take advantage of the nice day and get so much done.
I walked around the south facing flowerbeds to see if anything had come up yet. I found daffodils up about 1½” in the New West garden, daffodils up about 2½” - 3” in the East of Steps garden and the crocus was about 4” high in the South garden.
The daffodils in the West of Steps garden haven’t grown much. And the snowdrops in the New West garden are still flowering.
I was pretty wiped out, got the chores done early, and rested for the evening.
On Sunday I plan to be dead. The forecast originally was for rain, but it’s to be partly sunny and cold. My neighbor messaged about the next documentary to be shown at Great Falls on Sunday afternoon, so I plan to rest and go to see that.