A weekend at Carla’s place

Friday night is spent with the girlfriends - a breather before the weekend work begins.

Saturday starts at 9 a.m. The dew has to leave the lawn before it’s time to mow but meanwhile the vegetable garden needs weeding. Although gloves certainly help to protect the hands, I usually end up pulling them off. Long fingernails are so handy for pinching out the itsy, bitsy young weeds.

After weeding, it’s time for a second sowing of mesclun salad mix, peas, beets and spinach. The first sowing is almost ready to begin harvesting. Planting more seed will extend collection of the crop into late fall. This year I plan on sowing cold crops like broccoli, carrots and lettuce in September beneath plastic hoops to harvest through the winter.

The strawberries are beginning to ripen now and have to be picked daily. Hopefully this evening I’ll have time to make a few bottles of strawberry freezer jam.

Passing by the climbing rose bush on my way to fertilize the windowboxes and pick off the dead geranium flower-heads I notice the canes need to be tied to the arbour. I can’t wait for these plants to begin blooming. Called ‘Compassion’, the blooms on these repeat-blooming climbers will be apricot, highly scented and tea-rose in form. They’ve received weekly fertilizing with a water-soluble fertilizer in addition to a generous trowel-full of bone meal this spring.

This afternoon I jump in the car to visit local garden centres to see what’s available in impatiens. I’m looking for a particular colour for a mass planting in my east flower bed to compliment the shade of my house.

As I climb into the car I notice more weeds are popping up in the gravel parking lot I made a few years ago. Maybe I’ll have a chance to pull those tomorrow. I’m successful in my shopping spree and return with close to a dozen packs of coral impatiens transplants.

It’s scrub-up time for a barbecue with friends. This day is done.

Two years ago I planted close to two dozen young bridalwreath spirea as a hedge to corner my property and I continue to pamper them into growing bigger. This year they rewarded me with curtains of lacy white blooms. I devote several hours to removing the weeds around their base as the church bells ring a few blocks away on Sunday morning. By mid-afternoon the mower can finally be hauled out, but the grass is so high the lawn needs to be raked afterwards. Some of the clippings are mounded about the base of two weigelas to act as an organic mulch.

There’s just enough time to plant the impatiens before supper, then a potluck at a cousin’s place. Not having to cook tonight is a treat. Next week maybe I’ll get a chance to finish distributing that load of compost I received earlier this spring....