Busy, Busy Day!

What a full day this was!!!! 

I'm a Certified Case Manager which means I have to renew my certification every 5 years.  I have to have 80 CCM credits.  My company offers programs online and I have been putting off doing them.  I did all six of them this morning.  Took about 3 hours.  The first five went quickly but the last one was a booger - all about Medicare, set-asides, life care plans, etc. - very technical.  Yuck!  One was on Rotator Cuff Tears and another on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder -- these and the other three were very interesting and included stuff I can use.  I still need about 24 credits to make 80!  YIKES!  I have until October but the way time is flying, October will be here before I know it!  Certainly don't want to miss the deadline -- definitely don't want to retake that exam!

After I finished the courses, I headed down the driveway to the studio.  I turned the soap out of the mold and then went outside. 

With garden gloves on, I dug in --- literally -- or tried to.  The dirt was hard as a brick!  I had to go get the big shovel - my garden spade wouldn't budge it.  I planted the plants I bought earlier this week - St. John's Wort, Foxglove, a variety of sedum, a mini-hosta, something tall named Lucifer that I'm not sure I like, parsley, and a small sage, several thymes, etc.  I finally got all but two pots of ornamental grass planted. 

My goal with the garden was to fill it full so the plants would choke out the weeds!  It is so full this year that we didn't even put down mulch.  I'm not sure I like it - it's beginning to look a little too jungle-like.  Some tall plants are planted in front of the smaller ones or are leaning over the smaller ones.  One sedum and a ground cover is trying to take over.  I have three or four varieties of daisies and one group is really huge this year.  The lavender and the verbena have both gone crazy!  And, my calla lilies have more blooms than ever.  Everything must have really liked the rainy Spring and the HOT temps that followed.   

The mint always takes over but I forgive it because it smells sooooooo good!  There's nothing like fresh mint!  I LOVE the fragrance!  I dry the leaves and use it in my soap.  I bring it in and set vases around so I can pinch it when I pass by.  Love that smell!  It lasts a long time in a vase.  I also love it in iced tea. 

Yes, I could thin stuff and divide stuff but that's a lot of work!  Maybe this fall......

I also planted this miniature garden.  I need small rocks for the pathway and then it will be done.  Raywood Garden Center in Danville, VA sells the mini accessories - little gates, wheelbarrows, chairs, buckets, birdhouses, bee skeps, birdbaths, etc.  I thought I had a fence but evidently I don't.  I think I'll get one and add that, too.  Mom has planted two.  She placed one of those little - oh what do you call it??? - the ball on a pedestal that I see in people's yards and gardens??  Oh well, can't think of it.  I think she used a golf tee and a marble!  Cute!  Be sure you click on the picture so you can better see the mini-garden.

Although I didn't see them last time I was there, on Courthouse Road in Midlothian, VA there are two fields that plant sunflowers for the public to pick.  There is a mailbox on a post (like a rural mailbox) with the door sealed shut.  There's a slot in the door and a pair of garden shears hanging from the box.  You cut the sunflowers you want, hang the shears back on their hook, and put your money in the box.  The fields are beautiful!  All varieties of sunflowers - big ones, little ones, rusty-red, brown, and yellow ones.  Just beautiful! 

The birds plant my sunflowers and they're usually little scrawny spindly things.  Thanks to the bird that planted this one!  Nothing puny about this one.  I'm really enjoying it!

Something else I've enjoyed this weekend while putzing around outside ---- the chickadees!  The tree in front of the studio where the birdfeeder hangs has been full of them all weekend.  I think they're the Momma and her four new babies that hatched this Spring.  I've loved listening to their chatter. 

I peeked in the bluebird house today and the nesting cup is overflowing with bluebirds!!!  They look as if they're past ready to fledge.  I expect they'll be gone in a day or two.  I kept seeing Momma go in and out of the box.  I can't believe there was enough room in there for her, too!  Maybe she was trying to encourage them to leave!  Daddy was perched on top of the box.  I placed a saucer near the box and filled it with shelled sunflower seeds and crumbled up bluebird nuggets.  Bluebirds have soft beaks and don't like the black oil sunflower seeds I put in the feeders.

Of course, I wasn't in the garden alone.  The cats LOVE to join me and today was no exception.  Earl Gray and George had fun hiding from each other underneath the plants and then pouncing on each other.  Then, George was good for nothing  - collapsed on the picnic table!  Gracie missed out.  She must have been around in front of the house where she likes to hang out there under the boxwoods. 

AND, here is the Mystery Shawl 8 so far.  I draped it over a boxwood for this picture and couldn't stretch it out much or it would come off the needles.  I'm on Row 161.  Slow but sure!  I'm also still working on the market bag.  I've almost reached the 26 inches required before I do the basketweave stitch section for the other half of the top.  Then, I'll have to do the straps.  I'm also working on a Multidirectional Diagonal Scarf with Noro Silk Garden, of course!  That's my standard "knit-while-I-wait-in-doctors'-waiting-rooms" project.  No counting!

Well, better run!  This is going to be a BUSY week with lots of work appointments and computer stuff to do since it's coming up on the end of the month.  End of June!  My goodness, where has the year gone!

Have a good week and thanks for visiting!

   

Comments

[Rusty M.]

Hiya Robin! Your garden is breathtaking. And your pictures of the flowers are beautiful. I think the ball in the garden that you mentioned is a gazing globe or ball. I love those.

[Leah]

For someone that does not like to be out the heat, you sure have a beautiful garden. I have never heard of a mini garden, but it is surely cute!!!

[Anne]

Hi Robin,
Your gardens sound like ours. Very crowded. The weeds still manage to find a place here and there to poke thru. I keep telling Mike I want to tear all the plantings up and start over. We have some invasive varieties that no matter how many I dig up and pitch they continue to survive.
Oh well!!!
Anne

[mrspao]

Time seems to really be flying by. I don't envy you having to do those exams - they sound awful. My cats love it when I'm gardening - they are always watching and wanting to peer into the pot when I'm planting :) Your garden looks so beautiful.