On a Roll - August 20, 2023 @goldenoakfarm

On Sunday morning Tom and daughter and puppy arrived at 7:30AM. Tom and puppy went inside to try to update my ancient computer so it won’t keep shutting off several times a day.

Larry wasn’t sure what to make of a DOG in the house, but he wasn’t terrified of it like he’d been of the walker. Tom said at one point he sat within 10’ of the puppy, who was under Tom’s chair at the computer, and just watched it.

When they went to come outside, they got within 2’ of him before he decided it would be prudent to retreat upstairs. And when I came inside, he came down, checked the whole downstairs twice, and then was fine.

Tom’s daughter, my intern’s sister, and I went out and sorted out the cold frame first. We got a lot of the plants that had died out and found the arnica, the first to be planted in Row 4 of the New Herb garden.

The arnica has done pretty well considering the size of the sneezeweed in its bed. We put in 6 more plants.

In the bed behind the arnica I had let balsam volunteers grow in half of it. I planted 2 leggy cosmos in the other half. The next bed had baptista and Tulsi basil and golden purslane vounteers, so we just amended and mulched.

There were 2 small beds before the peppermint bed. Even though I’d tried to be thorough in getting the rampant peppermint out of the beds in the spring, I’d obviously missed a few roots. So we got the beds well weeded, amended, and planted 3 pathetic marigolds in one and 6 very excellent pennyroyals in the one next to the peppermint. I was astounded to find the pennyroyal in such good shape after a summer in the cold frame. Maybe, if there’s no frost until October, it will survive…

We amended the peppermint and made sure the mulch hadn’t covered the edging that sort of contains it.

There were 2 beds on the other side of the peppermint. The first has the balloonflower that’s in full bloom. We deadheaded it and weeded the beds and amended. I found 2 orange calendula for the balloonflower bed that were doing very well.

The other tiny bed was to have pyrethrum. This was another surprise as they were also doing excellently. In the past, they were some of the ones to give up the ghost early in the cold frame. We mulched each bed as we finished it.

We had about 20 minutes before she had to go when we reached the echinacea paradoxa. That just needed a light weeding, amending, and perimeter mulching. The winter savory on the end needed the same, and we were done!

Because of the tall plants at either end, I had to climb up into the wildflowers to get a shot of the whole row. I am now over half done in the New Herb garden. It’s awful late to be doing it, but I do what I can. So much rain this year has really slowed down how much I can do outside.

In the wildflowers the big show is black-eyed Susans. The lanceleaf coreopsis is still flowering and it looks like some St. John’s wort is about to flower. There’s the ever present yarrow and plenty of weeds and grass.

My helper friend declared the white rose dead on Friday. At some point it will go to compost. The wood sorrel volunteers are present, as always in anything outside. Maybe next year we will succeed with the rose.

In the afternoon I went with a friend to a concert in Old Deerfield. It was a group we’d seen 10 years ago. They are fun to watch and did a wide range of things from O’Carollan to Italian to Russian to Tetris music to Brazilian. This year they are serving refreshments after, and they are excellent homemade things.

On Monday, I’m hoping to get out to the New Herb garden by myself in the early morning before it gets hot. I plan to just weed walkways and beds for Row 5 and 6. We’ll see how far I get. I’ve also got laundry to do.