Cool Like the Other Side of the Pillow

The weather cooled off...well temporarily, it's been pretty hot this weekend.  What is a gardener to do when walking out the door no longer feels like walking into an oven?  Well this one weeded a lot!  This pile didn't make it to the compost pile.

I finally got to beat back the new part of the tropical garden and reclaim the pathway.  I promise this is actually an improvement.  It's still really overgrown, and we realize that we made some bad choices on where we planted things.  We have already started strategizing how to fix this...with another tropical bed being added to garden...with a pond...I get a pond.  I'm psyched.

We also tamed the front daylily bed, known as Mabel's Bed after Mable Mathews the daylily hybridizer.  It had gotten embarrassing.  To get all of the Bermuda Grass out the daylilies needed to be cut back.  It looks so much cleaner and the dayliles have already started to grow out of their back to school hair cuts.

The Agave Bed got a weeding too.  It wasn't in very bad shape, but a lot of weeds had creeped in among the rain lilies.  They have been removed and everything is looking good.

Both of these tropical beds got a minor clean up.  It wasn't too bad, a little bindweed, a little St. Augustine grass and some general clean up required.  Still, it looks nice all cleaned up.

Here's another full sun bed that had gotten out of control.  It was really bad.  Bindweed is the worst and it grows so fast.  Now it's cleaned up and ready for a renovation we have planned.  We want to extend the bloom season and add some pathways through the bed to facilitate weeding and daylily hybridizing.

The only color comes from a few daylilies that are reblooming.  Hopefully next summer we'll have a little more going on.

The Shade Garden got a quick weeding, but honestly, less than a buckets worth came out.  Still, it's never bad to stay ahead of the weeds is it.

So, what does all of this freshening up and clearing out look like when it's all said and done?

We're going to need a bigger compost pile!  Well, not really, it will break down fast, but we're close.