Digging deep

First the good news:  Not only is that ixora in the front yard green and full, it is now blooming!  What a relief.

The bad news is I discovered that a long-lost sprinkler head --buried under lots of grass -- was actuallyrunning underground, causing tunnels and flooding the area above ground.  I have spent 3 days digging in and around tree roots and finally found the sprinkler this morning.  Naturally, it was broken.  The piping is under a root.  My husband is trying to figure out what to do now.  In the meantime, we will not be able to run the sprinklers in that section and I will try to fill as much of the washed out spaces as possible with dirt. 

What fun is ahead!  :-(

Grass is my undoing as a gardener

As I said in my last post, my next project was weeding in the front yard.  The large island close to the street was the main focus.  I found few actual weeds but more crabgrasses spreading their tendrils in wide circles.  This is the garden that holds my maple tree and the large ixora that was decimated by the cold winter we had.  I'm happy to say the ixora has recovered beautifully, thick with leaves although no flowers yet.

 I'm sure they will return as well as the weather cools.  This plant blooms all winter, providing welcome red flowers while other plants are dormant.

The gardens were quickly done and then I turned to the crabgrass in the lawn.  The closer I looked, the more I saw.  I worked two main areas that are now bare earth (actually, sand).  I intend to dig up the crabgrass  on at least a weekly basis and fill the bare spots with plugs of St. Augustine, if I can find them.  Most of the garden shops I frequent have sod in large squares on large pallets.  I don't have a vehicle to transport that, plus I know what kind of strength is required to cut up the sod.  I don't have that either. 

Also, I'm sure the ground can use restoration.   I'll have to research that.  Lawn care is not my forte, as you can probably tell. 

I'll let you know how that goes in the weeks to come.

Deadly virus sends me out in the early a.m.

I was out in my gardens soon after I woke up this morning to take care of two pressing projects.  The first was to remove a sick rose bush.  I found out a week ago that my multiflora rose in the back garden has rose rosette, a lethal virus that often attacks multifloras.  There is no cure and the best choice is to remove the entire bush.  No other roses are close to it so I probably have saved them.  Now to decide what else I can plant there.  A different type of rose bush is probably safe and that would be my first choice.  Perhaps it will be another Mr. Lincoln, a few of which grace my rose island in the front yard. 

The other project was to "trim" the unwanted invasive vines and other branches encroaching my yard over the fence from the neighbor's yard.  This has been an ongoing battle for years.  The neighbor has a veritable jungle growing in the corner and apparently doesn't care what grows there.  The potato vines and others not only grow over the fence, hanging from the podocarpus lining the fence, but also through it.   The growth in the past 2 months has been rapid and rampant.  I wish I could get into the neighbor's yard to tackle the plants at ground level but that isn't possible.  So all I can do is keep trimming what hangs over the fence line. 

An hour was all I could manage in the heat this morning.  By 8:30 the sun was high enough to feel its presence and I called it a day.  But there will be more as I need to tackle the weeds in the front yard.

Visions not always reality

The date of this blog tells you how long it has been since I've been able to get into my gardens.  I was working inside the house, preparing for a visit from my daughter and grandsons.  Karin spends a week with us each summer to give us grandparents more time with the boys, building memories for us all.  And it's a great time for me to have more one-on-one time with Karin. 

The last time I did any yard work was again pulling weeds (grasses) from the pool garden and pulling up the two tree-form bougainvilleas I had planted a few months ago.  The one in the back corner was completely overrun and devoured by some type of bug; the other just misplaced.  I hate making such errors in judgement when it comes to plants.  My visions don't always match the realities of growth.  Other new plants, like the snow on the mountain, however, are growing exactly as envisioned so I do sometimes succeed.

Despite the rain mentioned last time, our area is still in drought mode, being several inches short of the average rainfall.