After awhile I got up, went into the house, dressed, combed my hair and got ready to work. I watered all the potted plants first, and filled the birdbath, then got on my gloves, hat and long-sleeved shirt and went out into the herb garden to do some serious weeding.
Oh, and I don't want to forget, I ate my very first red raspberry. See, I told you!!! About the time my strawberries quit producing the red raspberries would start coming on. Hooray!!
Anyway, I weeded for a good 2 hours. Weeding is one thing but thinning is quite another. Oh how I hate to throw away all those little plants. If I could transplant them all I would but one can only deal with so many plants. Coxcomb are beautiful when they bloom and I must have had hundreds of those tiny plants out in my garden. The rows were in nice little straight lines and I had weeded them all but today I had to thin them. Mercy!!! All those plants, but I did it. Then I worked on weeding the calendula. You can't weed the calendula to perfection or you will actually make them fall over and be straggly. I find that they do really well planted en masse with a few weeds or grass left at the base. No big weeds but not totally cleaned to death. It's like leaving them something to help them stand. I know I probably sound nuts but it seems to work better that way. Last year I planted them singly and they just fell over and didn't really look pretty at all. They bloomed but it sure didn't look nice. So I'm back to the old way I'm used to. It's not like I didn't try something new!
I'm always telling people to tag and/or mark their plants since just because you know what they are in the Spring doesn't mean you'll remember what they are in the middle of Summer. Well, I didn't take my own advice in the annual flower bed because I was sure I'd remember and now I have 2 rows of something that's growing really, really nicely and I haven't the foggiest what they are. It will be a great surprise sometime this Summer but maybe I'd better start taking my own advice, huh?
Oh, and before I close out my blog for the week - Happy Father's Day to all the Dad's out there. It's a tough job but to the man who steps up, his reward will be boundless!!
Psalm 78:5-8 He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children, that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments; and that they should not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God.