Some dirt therapy

After this past Thursday's 1" of rain, I knew that now would be the best time to pull weeds.  Yesterday was mostly cloudy which kept me cool and out of the sun.



I hauled out my plastic stool and (slowly with breaks) worked my way through both of the driveway zinnia beds.

I ran across a couple of volunteer dill plants, so left them in place.  You can't have too much dill, y'know.








Then I weeded the birdbath bed.  So much loss here this year: several mums (and one of those left is really struggling).  There's been no reseeding of salvias (coral nymph, white, short elegans) either so the area is pretty bare right now.  At least the oak leaves are holding up and doing their job as mulch.

I also cleaned out under the big crabapple next to the privacy fence.  It wasn't so much weeds per se, but a dense thicket of tree suckers.  They get worse every year.

That was it.  I was pretty much done in, but things look a little better.  Hopefully this week I'll be able to plant out the zinnia starts in the cleaned beds.  I'm looking forward to some color....

Next in line (waiting for one of my good days) is the crabapple bed.  You can see it's getting overgrown with dandelions and henbit.  Also a lot of loss there, too.  Less than half of the Golden Jubilee agastache made it through the winter.  Both Crazy Daisy shasta's succumbed as did those gorgeous 'special' mums I prized so much last year.  In fact, most of the mums everywhere died as did all my Apache Sunset hyssops.

What hasn't died is being eaten by deer.  This year I see they have eaten milkweed (even with its bitter latex sap).  I don't think anything is immune - except maybe the steadfast catmint.  I should just plant THAT everywhere.....