Kind of a drag...

Lawn drag, that is.  Monday it rained so I played inside.  But Tuesday was bright and mild, though everything was still wet from the rain AND another light frost that morning (flowers still un-fazed).  Time to haul the leaves from the front/side of the house to the garden beds in back.  The pic shows the first load using an improved lawn drag.  

Previously the tarp was attached to the 8-ft 2x2 boom by bits of rope through the tarp grommets.  But the ropes kept abrading from friction on the lawn/ driveway and breaking off, so I rigged up a better way to attach the tarp.  I removed the ropes, wrapped the end of the tarp totally around the 2x2, then, using 3 2' metal straps to act as a giant washer, I screwed the tarp to the 2x2 along the whole length.  LOTs of strength now for hauling heavy wet leaves (which are the only kind I think I'll have this year.  There was yet another .4" in the rain gauge this morning!*glub*).

It took a couple of hours to move the leaves from the front to the back, heavy work raking due to wetness.  But since the leaves WERE so wet, I'm totally bypassing the mid-way process of last year - leaf wacking.  This year I'm just dumping the larger, less shredded leaves onto the beds.

I had enough leaves to mulch the wall-zin bed, the brick-zin bed, front of the veg bed and a decent section of the bee ring bed.  

While working, I was amazed at the number and variety of butterflies and bees that were mobbing the aster, zins, and honeycomb butterfly bush.  I saw white cabbage butterflies, clouded sulfurs, a common sooty wing, a couple of monarchs and a red admiral.  You'd think it was August, not October.

While the ring bed butterfly bushes stopped blooming several weeks ago and have been cut back from 8' monsters down to 4' size for overwintering, the honeycomb buddleia in the arbor bed continues to astonish and amaze, with it's soaring height, dense foliage and luscious blooms that are still coming on strong.


No wonder it's attracting so much attention!