I actually feel like I had one! It’s Sunday, and I was very lazy today, but I did get some stuff done, and for once, I have nothing waiting to be planted!

Friday after work, I stopped at Buchheit, bought some plant stakes, two terra cotta trays for butterfly puddles, and two very expensive spotlights.

Butterfly puddles, filled with compost and a little sand.

Planted the dogwood out front. Not quite where I wanted because there was a huge root from the old tree in my way, but I’m okay with the location.

Saturday morning, I started early, before it got unbearably hot. My goal was to get the posts set to rope up my flowers before they get tall and we get a hard rain.

Yaaayyy! Crocosmia is getting there!

Stoke’s? Wood’s? I forget. I ordered one, they sent the other. Pretty, though, and they close at night.

Botanists identified this as evergreen bugloss.  I think it’s a stray floor-sweepings seed because there’s only one.

Planted my second dogwood in late morning, and it was hotter than the hinges on the gates of hell. Exactly enough pine bark mulch left from the snakeroot to use for my little tree.

The day’s kill. Japanese beetles and those goddamned longhorn milkweed beetles, drowned in soapy water. Die, you bastards, die!

Hibiscus blooms soon, if I can keep the sawflies at bay.

I also changed the MLB feeders, and one had been discovered by ants. I made a baffle, and some confused ants found out the party was over.

I put my very expensive solar LED floodlights in front of the Tornado Honeysuckle. They’re just what I wanted–a glow, not bright illumination. Thankfully it was sunny on Saturday and they could charge. I didn’t take off the tags or set them properly in case they had to go back. I can now!

I didn’t quite finish roping up the flowers on Saturday because I needed some short stakes I’d actually thought I got, but set down in the store and left there. P got them for me on Saturday afternoon, so I went out early this morning and finished. Three posts across the back that I had to dig because they were close to a gas line, two on the sides for tall flowers, and P drove those for me. I’m finally finished with the post smasher I borrowed from work! Anyway, the rest is done with plant stakes of varying heights, and I tried to anticipate which flowers would fall if it rained hard, and crisscrossed as much as I could. I don’t love the way it looks, but stakes are better than flat flowers!

Gaillardia is starting to sprout.

The new snakeroot is showing a few signs of recovery. Yaaayyy–that shit was expensive! I doubt all of it will live, but some is better than none.

My snakeroot is faring a bit better, since it’s established.

Robinette up over the patio has at least one bebe! She’s been flying back and forth, getting food, and the sounds she makes are a little like a brood hen. Bless her little birdy heart.

Of the 15 I wrangled, only one died trying to pupate  (that I know of), but I haven’t found any more, so this guy is it. He was the last of the four that I moved onto pipevine after all of my snakeroot was gone, and all of the new snakeroot as well. I found him…Thursday, I think, but forgot to post him. He still looks the same today, but I think they go 6-10 days, so not much longer. Better get out there with my Canon tomorrow because this little dude cost me roughly $250!