Work in the yard*

This is the bed by my front walk. To the far left is the peony, and just to the right of it is some bee balm I set out last year that has come back twice as big, despite not getting enough sun, I think. The far right plant is a wild violet, but it is growing on top of some very happy lantana that comes back bigger every year. I wish it was the multi-colored (it's just yellow), but I'm not messing with success. It was beautiful last year, and it's very drought tolerant. The other clumps are artemisia, set out because the chipmunks won't eat it - it's poisonous. I'm not that fond of it, but it is living, so I haven't dug it out yet.

Well my prediction about getting no yard work done today turned out not to be true, which is a really good thing. Stuff needed to be done. I cleaned out the front bed in the mist and damp, getting thoroughly soaked in the process, but the peony was coming back, and I wanted to get the weeds cleared out before the lantana comes in, and to give the bee balm some room to spread. A friend of mine has told me that in a couple of years, the bee balm will take over the bed, but better that than weeds. I think the damp may keep it in check. I think it doesn't get enough sun there, and it tends to get a bit of fungus on it.

I also trimmed up the bushes in front of the porch. They were pretty shaggy. I pruned them pretty hard today, and took some wood off. They needed some aggressive shaping. They are ligustrum, or Mexican Privet, which I am training up into trees to shade the front porch, which gets afternoon sun. I have an understory of old-fashioned glossy abelia under them to form a hedge. The era of that shrub is appropriate for my house, and they get little white trumpet blossoms all over them in the summer every time it rains. They smell like heaven, although they probably don't do my hay fever any good. Old timers call them bumblebee bushes, and indeed the bumblebees LOVE them, coming from all over to lazily tumble in and out of the blossoms, drunk on nectar, all summer long.

I have a high front porch, since the house is built on a bit of a bank, and it catches all the breezes. After I was done, I sat out and enjoyed the pretty afternoon for a while, before the mosquitoes came out. We are plagued with them in my neighborhood, and that, along with the heat, means I can't use the porch a lot in the heat of summer. So I spend all the time I can there in the spring before the bugs come out, and in the fall after they die off. In the mornings in the summer, I can still sit out for a while, if I wait till the mosquitoes go to bed, and come in before it gets really hot.

I didn't get to mow, since it was so wet, but that is not hard to do. Tomorrow, I'll tackle the privet hedge on the corner of the house, which grows like a weed. I would have pulled it out, but a) that stuff is almost impossible to kill, b) it hides an ugly corner of the foundation, and c) it has been there so long, I just haven't had the heart to yank it. It was there when I bought the house, there's no telling how old it is.

It was good weather to be outside this afternoon, and I'm hoping the rain knocked the worst of the pollen down so I don't die tomorrow.

I went in, got cleaned up, and called Justin to see what they were up to. His ex Preston, and his current boyfriend Jim are up from Columbia. Justin is house-sitting over at Russ and Billy's. But by the time I called, it was after eight, and they didn't get to dinner until after 9. Justin told me they would just collapse when they got back to the house.

So I futzed around the house to get it in order, in case they come in tomorrow. We're going to the Jockey Lot down in Anderson.