Winning at Weeding

It was an NSD yesterday (No Sewing Day). I spent all my time in the yard, and there was a lot to do. First, I walked all around taking pictures of the latest blooming things. Let's start with the cherry trees, shall we?

The one on the left is a Black Tartarian. The one on the right is a Bing. The Black Tartarian is our second try. The first one we planted died, and we nearly lost the second one. Our tree service guy was able to save it, but we still had to hack about half of its limbs off. It's catching up, and thriving now.

These are the flowers on the Bing.

These next ones are the flowers on the Black Tartarian. They're kinda the same, but different.

We need different varieties to pollinate one another. Sweet cherries are not self-pollinating. Of course, bee activity is also necessary. I tell you this knowing full well that we will not get any of the cherries. The birds and raccoons are just too fast for us.

Also, the clematis is making progress. More flowers are opening.

There are lots of flowers still left to open.

The tulips are looking good. I spent a good part of the morning pulling grass out of their whiskey barrel planter, which gave me terrible hay fever. I had to go inside and deal with my nose before I could continue.

My furry friends joined me about that time.

Whoa, Smitty. Is there anything more meowvelous on a sunny day than a good dust bath?

Maybe if you're a black cat, Sadie. Us cats with white furs on our feets and necks have to be more purrudent in choosing where to roll.

This is a good place to sit though. It has the three C's, impurrtant to all cats: Calm, Clean, Cool.

He's sitting under our Japanese Maple tree, which is all leafed out now. At this point in the season, it has tiny red flowers hanging on the undersides of its branches. These are no larger than the head of a pin, and the bees love them. As I was standing there, I could here the tree humming with bee activity.

So, then I got to work. First, I restored the Gracie Memorial Catnip Garden. You might recall that Miss Gracie loved the catnip literally to death. She'd roll on the tiny plants, crushing and killing them, and that's why we erected the rock wall around it. The two kitties we have now are less exuberant in their loving.

Then I planted the three pots on our deck. They all have the same plants.

The red is verbena. The yellow are called "sundrops," and in the back are some snapdragons.

This pot had some pansies growing in it from years gone by, so I left them alone and didn't give this pot any snapdragons.

There are also four large pots lining the sidewalk that leads down to the greenhouse. Two of the pots have disintegrated and will need to be replaced. The marigolds and the geraniums will have to wait for that to happen before I can plant them. In the other two pots, I planted dianthus. This always does well here, and eventually, it'll fill the whole pot.

In the last pot, I planted Gerbera Daisies. I love these, but I never have much success growing them. Maybe this will be my year.

I kind of like those pink ones on the right with the messy hairstyles.

Finally, I planted some tarragon in the herb garden. If this doesn't do better this year, it may be the last tarragon I'll plant.

The problem with the tarragon is that the plants start out too small to use. And then they don't survive the winter, so I have a perennially too-small plant each year when I replace it. I'm giving it one more chance this year, but mark my words....  In my culinary herb garden experience, I've also given up on cilantro and dill. Both grow up and go to seed faster than I can use them. It makes more sense to buy it in the grocery store.

So that was the fun part of the day. The rest of the day was spent pulling weeds and dead-heading things. We're expecting one more sunny day today, and I still have a little bit of weeding that I didn't get finished yesterday. After that, I should have some time to sew. When Matthew left for work yesterday morning, he told me not to let the weeds win. To that I plead, no contest. The weeds won before we ever got started.

Oh yes, and Mike reached the dealership in South Carolina yesterday. When I spoke with him by phone, he had the new RV in tow and was headed to a campground on the beach. A little later, he called me and gave me a Facetime tour of the new rig. It looks just like the ones I showed you in the pictures from my previous post, except the colors are different. We chose darker leather for the furniture, and I believe the dinette chairs are a different color as well. He texted me some images of the exterior. He wanted full-body paint on this RV. The older ones, including ours, are covered in decals, which deteriorate over time and look terrible. This time...no decals...all paint. "Swoopy," is the word that comes to mind.

Here's the other side showing the front door. You can see the windows there. We'll have to replace one of them with a catio-friendly window. The catio requires a window that has a slide opening. These all tip out a few inches from the bottom, which will not allow a cat to pass through.

It's a relatively simple and inexpensive fix, and so that will be one of the first things to happen when he gets it home. You might remember we had to do the same thing with our truck camper window. Here's a picture of Himself lounging on his catio when we took them to the lake last summer.

On that trip, we discovered that having a window that opened up rather than to the side meant that the screen wouldn't stay up. We improvised with a rubber spatula to hold the screen open. These are things one must do for one's traveling cats.

So that's the update on the trailer. Mike made good time getting back to South Carolina. I think the return trip home will go much slower.