Summer Chores

I really do not like weeding.  It's a necessary evil and when you've been traveling and before that ignoring flower beds....well, let's just say they get their revenge.

While I was at my sister's last week we made a trip down in the country to the Dutchman's Store...a Mennonite market that has some of the best stuff.  On the way we stopped at a produce/flower store, another Mennonite venture, where I bought some herbs to bring home.  I have a small herb garden that is mostly in the shade and doesn't do really well, except for the thyme and rosemary and oregano, and I wanted to make a new one that gets a bit more sun.  Well when I went out to plant these new ones I realized that the weeds had taken advantage of my neglect to practically take over not only the herbs but also the flower beds around my deck.

Just look at that!  Thyme is at the bottom of the photo, rosemary in the middle and in the upper right, so covered by weeds that you can't see it is lemon balm.  I don't know what that awful vine is in the rosemary but it will take over everything if I let it!

Well the herb garden is better - that's oregano in the bottom left - but the Carolina Jasmine in the upper right corner, out of the herb garden - was about to be choked to death by a different insidious vine, this one with thorns!  And then I noticed a wild grape vine had wound it's way down at least 20 feet of the fence so out it came too.  And you know when you see one thing it leads to another so the flower beds around the deck...well that took two days to finish!  Before I finished I had several piles of weeds and trimmings that looked like this.

But it was all worth it....the new herb bed was done, the flower beds looked a lot better and I'm sure the shrubs and herbs planted there are all breathing a bit better.

I've got some sage, golden oregano, spicy oregano, thyme, lemon verbena, a lavender different from the French and English I already have (don't know the name of it) and one lone tomato plant in this bed.  The tomato is a leftover from the ones we had there earlier in the summer.

And the thyme and rosemary and oregano in the bigger bed are looking good!

And to make my week even better my Grandmother's Rain Lily has bloomed!  I'm so thrilled because I thought I'd lost it but it was just resting I guess.  This lily was in a pot on my grandmother's back porch for many years in California.  When she died about 40 years ago my cousin took it home with her and several years ago shared it with me.  Now my sister has one too and hers blooms all the time on her deck.  I think it likes her better than me.  :)

The herb beds and flower beds all need some fresh dirt added and some mulch on top of that so we're headed to the dirt store this morning.  Well, it's not really a dirt store...Lowe's is way more than that and gets way too much of my money!

Wouldn't this make a beautiful quilt?  If only we could capture the colors like God made them.....