Just like everyone says, if you want it to rain just wash your car. Last week I wrote an article about getting prepared for some dry weather and I washed my truck. Since doing that verbal rain dance we have received an inch and a quarter of the sweet water. It probably helped that Mimi and Jason saw some ominous clouds in the distance and decided to do a rain dance outside in the sales area, they were laughing and having a good time and it worked. I love it when it rains, I really just love changing weather and storms. I always get excited when a storm is brewing, it’s a good feeling when rain falls, you know all the nooks and crannies in the yard are getting soaked with the best water there is. This last round of rain inspired me to order an ambient weather station. I realized how spotty these summer rains are. We can get a big rain at the house and none 8 miles away at the nursery. Tornado warnings can get dicey, during those tornado nights we can only guess what we will drive up to at the greenhouses after one has come through, greenhouses and tornados don’t get along. With this weather station I will be able to see rainfall amounts, wind speed, wind direction, low temps and highs. It will send me a signal if temperatures drop below a certain number in a greenhouse in the winter telling me or John or Ben that a heater has gone off in the night.
One of us will get up there to see what the problem is. Knowing rainfall amounts at the nursery will help us make decisions about the landscape crew being able to work the day after a big rain, we have to be able to make those calls before 6 am so they will know wether or not to come in that day. That’s a dance we have to do a lot in the winter months. Knowing rainfall amounts will help us make decisions about running irrigation or not or turning up the volume. So that is how I sold the idea to myself and that is how I pitched it to Mimi, like a kid that needs a puppy, I need this toy.
Labor Day is behind us now, it kind of feels like we round a corner after Labor Day. The temperatures don’t change much but the calendar sure looks good. Something about seeing September on the calendar gets my juices flowing. Change is in the air, back to school, traffic is different in the mornings and evenings, football weekends are cranking up, pumpkins and mums are in the grocery stores, not the kind you’d want buy but the message is there. The mums at our greenhouses are budding very nicely and we may be able to bring some up retail pretty soon. We have planted marigolds, dianthus, snap dragons, foxgloves and a lot more. Next week we begin planting pansies and we will continue planting pansies every week until deep into October. I’ve lost track of how many pansies get planted in this 6 week period. Me and John and Luke will spend every Monday filling pots with soil and getting the laid out on the tables at the growing operation. Fall crop time is my favorite season at the greenhouses because pansies generally bloom at the same time so the sea of color is spectacular. We have hundreds of thousands pansies blooming at the same time it’s hard to stop taking pictures. After the pots are filled with soil we wet the soil, dibble the soil, put the seedling in the hole, water them in then give each pot a colorful info tag. We always hope to get each weeks round of new seedlings planted before the week is over so we can start the next week filling more pots so we can keep on track. We do have flat filling machines and conveyer belts and a cart system that make it more efficient but we are not up to snuff with some of the very newest inventions but we get by. We like our system and it works for us and we believe we have some really great looking plants to offer to our community.
Another change that comes with September is that bonus bucks starts over. People came in this year to spend their bonus bucks like there was no tomorrow. We were so busy in July and August, normally a nurseryman’s slowest and most dreaded months, the Bonus Bucks have created an exciting and fun atmosphere. It’s fun for the staff and for the customers to feel the excitement of getting to come up there and shop with their earned funny money for any ole thing they wish at half price. If you have not started shopping with us and collecting Bonus Bucks you should look into it, it’s a blast. September first we can’t take in any more bonus Bucks, if you have any left over you can throw them away. Now is the time that we give the bucks to you as you make a purchase we give you a buck for every 10 dollars that you spend. You will get more all year as you make purchases during the different seasons they add up really fast. In July and August you can come in and spend them like real money for up to half off on anything at the nursery.
There is another big change happening for us this September, renovations have begun. Ben and his crew have been doing demolition to the buildings getting ready for some new siding on the outside to give the place a new look, we are so excited to be able to do this, but I think if I reveal the plan that Mimi might make me curl up with my new ambient weather station.
I had some projects for the Labor Day weekend that have turned out nicely. I brought home pallets of stones, some rectangular chop blocks for edging beds with and some stacking stones for building a rock wall with. Now that the water has receded so much in our pond we were able to see the mud leading up to the concrete edge of the spillway which is very visible from all angles of our yard. I cut away the mud leading up to the spillway then added a row of chop block to give it a level place to start building the wall. The wall will now be what we see when the level of the pond drops this much. I should be seeing the wall a good bit during the summer months since I am using the water from my pond to irrigate my yard. I think I am using somewhere around 5,000 to 7,000 gallons every time I run all 22 zones of my system.
I had enough chop block left over to edge a new bed that we created last week, it looks so clean and neat with that Zoysia grass growing right up to it. That new edge will cause us to focus on this area that is coming along very nicely. This area is turning into the courtyard that we had hoped it would. The Japanese Yews are forming the walls and the Limelight Hydrangeas are on the inside of them for a great bedroom window view. There is more to be done there to make this vision come true.
That same weekend I built a 4’ x 4’ form and poured concrete to make a solid pad for our new fish feeder that Mimi got me for my christmas present, so not really so new. My excuse for not having put the feeder up before now is that until we had the spillway finished there wasn’t any use in trying to build up our fish population since we would practically drain the pond to get the work done. When the concrete dries we will put the feeder on the pad where I carved out a clear path for the fish food to get flung out and won’t get hung up in the iris that grows on both sides of the feeder. It’s the most hidden place we could think of and still get to watch the action when the feeder goes off when the bream turn into Piranhas churning up the water. We will hook up the solar panel to keep the battery sharp and begin working on the health of the pond in other ways. We will be adding an aerator and pond plants to give the fish and other diversity a habitat that will fit into our little world.
The annual task that comes along with September is getting our 30 x 30 wooden deck prepped for yurt season.
Over the Labor Day weekend we applied a sealant on the deck to protect the wood from the elements. Mimi and I built that deck on the hottest Labor Day weekend we can remember so we decided to make the Labor Day weekend be staining time, we don’t want to have to rebuild that thing any time soon. We want to be ready as soon as the weather breaks and we begin seeing some lower 60’s at night to put the yurt up, move in the king size bed and furniture and decorate it with lights and carpets and move the heater in. The yurt is where we spend 90% of our nights as long as the temps don’t go below 35 degrees or get to warm to sleep. We love sleeping outside, the air, the night sounds, no news blaring stupid stuff at us, something fun to break up the monotony.
We are looking forward to moving into the fall season both at home and at our nursery, Mississippis finest season is on it’s way. The rehearsal dinner for Max’s and Madelines wedding is also on it’s way in late October. Mimi and I have been growing plants that are ready to be transplanted into our gardens. Some will be cut flowers in our garden boxes, some are vines for covering arches. We are planning on cutting back the roses in time to send them into full bloom to line up with that weekend and my native swamp sunflowers are netted and staked, some are over 10 feet tall and will be blooming golden yellow for late October. We planted Jerusalem Artichokes around the yard for another striking gold, tall plant that looms over the roses at around 10 feet tall. I think we are on track to have the yard looking great for that very special weekend if the weather will just cooperate. It’s always fun to have an event or a season to get prepared for but this one is especially special for us and we want everything to be perfect.
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