outdoor work and indoor work

Sunday morning, no tai chi, no yoga. Instead I fed the cat and dog, took my morning meds, scrolled through my email for maybe half an hour and then went outside. I’ve been telling myself that I need to get out there first thing in the morning, before coffee, before blogging, before breakfast because it’s the coolest part of the day if I want to work on the flower bed on the east side of the backyard. Especially since that’s the only time it’s in shade until late afternoon. Today I finally did it.

This is the most neglected of all my flower beds for that very reason. Plus it doesn’t need much attention because it’s the one with the rock rose, the orange fall blooming cosmos, german verbena, mistflower, and the mexican bird of paradise which are hardy and come back and bloom in spite of me. But all that neglect eventually reaches critical mass and something needs to be done. One of my objectives was to dig up the big pot that had the bridal bouquet plumeria in it. You may recall that I didn’t dig it up or the big pink plumeria last winter as they had just gotten too big to deal with and left them to do or die. Well, they died and I need that pot.

I worked for about two hours pulling out a lot of the mist flower because it was taking over and has a dense root system, dug up the dayflower that also has invaded one end, pulled other weeds and grass, got the pot out. Then set the sprinkler up to give it a good watering while it was overcast. I didn’t get all the weeds out, like all the ground cover that is trying to take over that the flood from Harvey generously spread around my yard and every joint of leaves will root another plant though I did get out some of it. Still plenty more work to do but that’s another day and it looks much better.

This morning I got back out on this overcast and humid day and dug up the ground cover. But let’s back up to Saturday. I put up 29 of the 46 ears of corn (had two for dinner) and got 16 1/4 cups of corn, mostly one cup bags but a few 1/2 cup for adding to cornbread. 

Remember our resolve not to turn on the AC until June that I posted on Saturday? It lasted to Sunday morning. It was 83 in the house, so Marc turned it on until the house cooled off and then for another hour or so while I was in the kitchen producing heat and steam blanching the rest of the corn and getting it freezer ready, another 10 cups.

I’ve been going on about the pink angel trumpet and its sensual voluptuousness but my yellow angel trumpet (also in a pot because trying to get them to grow in the ground the last several years was a dismal failure and produced no blooms) had put on a few flowers as well.