Back with Mrs. Allen

Today we were back with Mrs. Allen after our day with Keith and Jeff.  We started out by pulling plants and saving bulbs in the gardens in front of the residence.  Saving the bulbs today was proving especially difficult because they weren't the usual large bulbs that Rocco and I had gotten used to.  They were much smaller with stems that were much easier to break, so Rocco and I both broke many stems and had to dig longer in order to find the bulbs to save them.  We took a quick pause to go pick up some plants from the science building that Mrs. Allen had said were too heavy for her and Courtney to move, and after we finished clearing the left side of the garden, Rocco and I went around back to prune some trees in the garden behind the residence.

Before we got to work on pruning those trees, Mrs. Allen showed us the grafting on the roses that grow over the arch behind The Residence.  The grafting is done between the roses and the roots of another species that is stronger or better suited to an environment.  This helps people grow healthier plants and plants that may not naturally be able to thrive in an area.  The problem with the rose plants in the back of The Residence was that other roses that hadn't grown out of the graft had grown substantially around the roses that were supposed to be there.  The peach colored roses that were grafted were growing around the arch with red roses that hadn't grown out of the graft.  Mrs. Allen said that eventually those roses would have to be removed.

After we pruned the trees and took a break, Rocco and I dumped the limbs of the trees that we had cut down at the burn pile which was still burning from yesterday morning and dumped the plants we had dug up in the compost pile.  Then we headed over to the Blundins' house to mulch.  The guys were anxious about getting mulch down before the rain comes this weekend.  They were worried about the splashing from the dirt against the white sides of the house, so Mrs. Allen loaded our buggies up with mulch with the tractor and we headed over.  Rocco and I mulched the sides of the house while Mrs. Allen and Courtney planted in the front.  We finished both loads of mulch from our buggies with some time left before lunch, so we picked up another load from the shop.  We mulched the front beds of the house while learning about edging from Mrs. Allen.  We edged around the front of the house in order to keep the mulch from going out into the yard by just using a shovel to dig a small indentation to form a boundary between the newly spread mulch and the yard.  By the time we had finished doing that, we headed to lunch.

Comments

Popular Posts