Better than Expected

Apparently the last year I got the front flower bed weeded was 2020. Sigh. But I couldn't resist seeing what is left, and aparently the wire covers over the plants have protected them pretty well. About half of it is weeded and generally cleaned up. Most of the hosta clumps have actually grown.

I thinned the daffodils. I cut to the ground that rose I mostly hate. It will be back anyway, but it was so out of control I needed to just get it out of the way.

There are a couple of successes I'll show in more detail another day, but with the ground dark from a nice afternoon watering, it almost looks like a garden!

The other big news is that Loren stopped by to help me get the mower on the trailer! Of course that turned out to be trickier than expected, but we got it done. It's delivered to be repaired. If it's going to cost too much, it may not be worth it... we shall see. An awful lot of big ticket needs lately.

I was going to take a hilly hike, but the day got away from me. I did get an appointment to get the car exhaust looked at, and I got the headlight fixed. Finally, I decided to walk to Betty's with some of the daffodil bulbs I promised her. Not very hilly, but not dead flat. Anyway, at least I took a 5-mile walk.

See More Garden Fun- 2017 See $10,000 Plan, $20 Budget - 2020

More Gardening with Betty

Betty and I spent some more time together today. First we potted up a few more plants.

Then we went out weeding in her big garden. Notice, please, that it has rabbit wire, and the lower half also has chicken wire fencing. This is why she can have nice plants and I can not. She also has decent dirt. I have sand and half sand.

They are about done, but here is the last of some beautiful dark magenta columbine.

And the most beautiful thing blooming curretly is a blue phlox.

This is probably all the time I'm going to have to spend over there for right now, but it sure has been fun.

I keep trying to get a picture of the red morning sun caused by the smoke from fires in Canada. It seemed as if I could even smell the smoke a few times. The sun looked much more red than this photo. And the power pole... well, it was there. I can't make either it or the sun move.

See Gardening with Betty

Gardening with Betty

I have mentioned my friend Betty from time to time over the life of this blog, but the truth is that even though I consider her one of my best friends, we haven't seen very much of each other in the past few years. In "another lifetime," we would get together almost once a week during the school year to work on various handicraft projects. We also both love to garden, although she's had a lot more success than I have. She doesn't like pictures, but approved this one.

She has a cute little green house, built by Roger, her hubby.

I got to spend time with her this morning, helping to pot up some of her bedding plants. I don't think I have any pictures from the way-back machine, but every summer she has a stunning display of coleus on her deck. We fixed up 11 pots of coleus, with 9 different leaf patterns.

We also potted up her herbs for this year.

And there were a couple of other things we potted as well. This is an ideal way for me to garden. She will take care of these plants and protect them from critters. There will be some very nice things to look at later in the season. And we got to visit. We seriously have hardly seen each other in a long time despite how much time we used to spend together.

In other news. It was a collosally gorgeous day, and I couldn't stay out of the dirt. My front flower bed will never look like Betty's, but it is looking much better than I would have thought after being totally ignored for 2 years. I did have wire over the hosta, so the deer did not get to chew on them for those years. I'll show you when I get a bit more work done.

See An Evening with Betty

Spencerville Sweets - Day 426

The rain was tapering off as I started hiking, so I took a chance on not needing the poncho. For once, I made a good choice. The woods was damp and the skies mostly gray, but I didn't walk in the rain.

The pink lady's slipper or moccasin flower, Cypripedium acaule, is just starting to bloom. This is a true orchid.

I've already posted Gaywings this year, but it was the most frequently seen flower today, and this was a particularly nice display with raindrops all over them. These are not an orchid.

Another flower that's just starting to bloom is starflower, Trientalis borealis. They are delicate and pretty, but the white is always so bright it's hard to get nice pictures.

Now we come to the dreaded roadwalk on 5-Mile Road. Everyone hates this, but there is a new reason to like it. At the corner of Big John Road, for several years now, there has been a sign that makes it look like there is a village, but it's just someone's house. The sign says, "Spencerville." This always got my attention because of my ancestors coming from Spencer, NY. Anyway, now there are also signs like this.

So I looked up the road. Just a few feet away is a cute little hut with a bench outside. This just opened over the winter months. Korrina Spencer does all the baking herself. You won't find all her items on any given day. Today there were cookies and cinnamon rolls. She also makes pies and cakes. This is self serve so you need to have the correct change. A pack of six decent-sized cookies was $4. I chose macadamia white chocolate chip. They were delicious. She loves NCT hikers, and the bench is big enough for 2 or 3 people. I took a rest stop there. If you must have a roadwalk, let's add cookies! Spencerville Sweet Shop

The other amenity on 5-Mile Road is that a homeowner has put a nice bench in their yard. The cooler has free water, juice, and snacks. Several people have already posted pictures of this on Facebook this year.

This section included the Big Sable River and the Vince Smith Bridge, but I've showed you so many pictures from there, I'll skip it this time.

The other really nice part of today for me is that the flowering dogwood, Cornus florida, is in full bloom. I passed by multiple trees full of flowers. Hint... you can drive north on Tyndall which jogs to become Hamilton and see quite a few of them from your car. If you like to take a Sunday drive, this would be the week.

In case anyone has forgotten, or maybe just because they are so pretty, here is one flower.

Miles today: 9.9. Total miles so far: 4699.5. Can you believe that? So close to the next 100. Well, I have one more official hike I can do here before we go back to the UP.

Someone came to look at the lawnmower for me today. It's SO easy when you know what you are doing. He stuck the multimeter probes into a few spots and in about 5 minutes determined that it's not the switch, it's a bigger problem. So the mower has to go to mower hospital. I can't fix it. It's good to have answers, but the lawn is going to be out of control before I get it mowed yet another year.

See Make New Friends See So Wrong About the Dogwood

The Culprit? and a Surprise

The primary focus of my day was the lawnmower. I am really, really tired of working on lawnmowers. And I don't have this problem solved yet.

This is the PTO switch. You pull it up to make the blades rotate. It may be bad. Or not. It's a likely suspect. Just getting it out of the mower was an education (because I've never done this or seen it done before, but I figured it out). I watched videos of how to test it with a multimeter to see if it has gone bad. Hmmm. This switch has 6 prongs, and all the newer ones have 8. So, I'm not sure if I'm testing it correctly or not. There are no 6-prong replacements. They are all 8-prong with matching numbers. So that seems like it would be OK, but I'm not sure how it can be all right to add two prongs. The socket has 9 slots so it would fit. 6.8.9. Seems a bit random to me.

I may have to get someone who knows more about this than I do. If it's not the switch or just wires, it's the solenoid. I haven't even found where the solenoid is yet. The old mower just had a lever which mecanically engaged the belts to drive the blades.

The surprise? Well, despite how many times I've declared that I'm done trying to keep a flower garden here with the lousy soil and too many hungry critters, each year I can't seem to stop myself from playing in the dirt.

So, I'm cleaning out the flower bed in front of the house. This little ground cover is sometimes called Creeping Charlie. (Several other plants are also called that.) This is Glechoma hederacea. It often grows wild in lawns. It's supposed to be a nuisance plant that forms dense mounds. Ha! All it's ever done in my gardens is creep all over, one skinny tentacle at a time, never looking nice. I'd be thrilled to see a dense mound of it.

But the surprise is that it bloomed this year. I don't think I've ever seen the blossoms- on my plants, anyway. It's a member of the mint family, and has a nice spicy scent when crushed.

Another surprise is that there are a few plants in my front garden that are still alive. So there is potentially a reason to weed that bed.

A final suprise wasn't so great. There is a patch of moss phlox growing in the yard, and I thought I'd dig it up and plop it into a space in that "lost" rock garden. I put in the shovel and pulled up a clod of dirt. Instantly there were about 5 biting ants on my hands. Ugh. Guess I'll leave that alone for a while!

Anyway, I did do several things I was supposed to today, even if I can't say that anything is done.

See Mower and More