Back in early May, I went on a weekend adventure with my girlfriends. When I returned, to my delight, I discovered that my husband took the opportunity to plant flowers on the embankment near our mailbox. Hurray!
Now, that might not seem like a big deal to you, but last year we never got around to planting that area. In fact, it was an overgrown mess most of the summer. (Quite frankly, it was a bit of an embarrassment, considering we’re both horticulturists.) This year was gonna be different, we vowed, and he got the ball rolling. He used a fair amount of plant material, including several trailing kinds like Wave® petunias and sweet potato vines. Then I added lots more over the following weeks to bring in more color and to cover the space, using plants like marigolds, zinnias, Gerbera daisies, purselane and nicotiana. But with the exception of applying fertilizer and doing the occasional weeding and watering as needed, the bed hadn’t got much attention since May. Now here we are in mid-July. The bed my husband started is really flourishing. (I could easily go out and pick an entire bouquet of fresh zinnias, and no one would miss ’em!) But in my daily walks out to the mailbox, I’ve started to notice a few areas that have just been gnawing at me. The main thing is that there are a couple of “holes” in my bed – gaps in the plant material exposing bare spots of earth, ripe for weeds.
And speaking of weeds, I noticed some. I must’ve missed a few the last time I weeded, because some real monsters had since broken through the flower canopy and were waving at me in the breeze – mocking me. And then there was the sweet potato vine. I know it’s an aggressive grower, but the variegated one in particular was about to take over the corner of the bed and overgrow the other flowers in that area. Not good.
Well, I couldn’t take it anymore, and the other day I got up early to spiff up my flower bed. (It’s not that I particularly enjoy waking up with the birds, but it’s about the only good, cool time to get the job done, since daytime temps typically reach the mid- to upper-90s this time of year. I’d recommend becoming an early riser, too, if you’ve got a similar garden project to do.)
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