Day 37, Sunday, July 5, 2026: Sunning and Phloxing…
Sunday morning was hot and we could feel it. We started around 9 and did quite a lot out in the garden. D and P began by checking the stairs by the bridge – they were well cooked and ready to go. Y watered the plants and planted the last round of Bog Filter marginals, i.e. the newly unquarantined cattails and ; the lower pond had no more space for marginals. Y also worked on planting some more Thyme along the path in the North East. D trimmed some of the logs on the Palisade that were capped, now that we’d decided to keep the Palisade – it had grown on the rest of us.
After brunch, E, P and Y went looking for some more plants and plant supplies for some of our plants that need something extra. We went to Dogwood and got some Karl Foerster, Blood Grass, and a Dwarf Mugo Pine that we couldn’t resist. Handling the Karl Foersters was a delicate affair, and after a brief pitstop at P2’s and G’s place where we collected yet more plants (thanks G and P2!), we headed back home to unload the goods. After a brief hydration break and a small energy bar, we were back on the road to Bylands where we found the Phlox P had been pining after. Next up was Home Depot where we gathered some bags of good soil and cedar mulch. We finally went to Buckerfield’s in an attempt to find some acidic potting compost for our Snowbell. Not finding a suitable standalone compost, we decided to buy some Peat Moss, and use our own home made compost in the mix, enhanced with some pine needles to make it overall more acidic. Thanks Claude and Gemini! After some more errands, we finally headed home.
When we got home, D had already started planting some of the Karl Foersters in the new patch we had identified for it. We added all the five varieties of Phlox that we had bought and the remaining Karl Foerster to completely fill out this area, before adding cedar mulch to it. While D set up a sprinkler to water this area deeply, P and Y moved on to planting the Blood Grass over on the North East side of the Bridge, next to the new steps. D and Y continued this while P moved on to potentially planting the Mugo Pine next to the West side of the Bridge in the hole D had started digging for it. However, some more research revealed that Mugo Pines needed full sun and we decided to wait since the spot was almost fully shaded by our Ash Tree. P and D planted some of the ground cover we’d picked up from P2’s and G’s house earlier, and we called it a day. It had been an extraordinarily warm day and we needed to cool down after spending so many hours outside!
