Patio Cleaning and Rum

There are suddenly about a million things to do in the garden, mostly repotting plants or putting them in the ground. It seems like everything we own is pot-bound. Yesterday I repotted our geraniums, a coreopsis, and my largest dahlia seedling, and I discarded all the seed trays where nothing ever grew. There's more to do today.

I also went on a campaign to clean our patio. I scraped and swept up a big bucket full of moss, leaves, weeds, pebbles and dirt -- above is the finished product.

See that bush to the right? It's a Hypericum, or St. John's Wort, and it's growing in the crack between the edge of the patio and the house. I know I should remove it. I'm sure it's not good for the stone and the brick. But it has amazing yellow flowers and bees love it, so it can stay for now.

I did remove the inula that was growing between the patio stones. Dave and I left it all last year, but it was in a terrible place -- right in the middle of the walkway by the back door. I had planned to move it after it went dormant, but that turned out to be impossible, at least not without tearing up the patio -- it was so deeply and firmly wedged between the stones. So it had to go. I just cut it off as deeply as I could. I don't think it will come back, but I could be wrong.

I left the forget-me-nots. They don't do any harm and they're so pretty at this time of year. For some reason we don't have as many as usual out in the garden -- they're around the patio stones instead!

I potted up our surviving lupine and rigged a squirrel-deterring cage over the pot. We'll see if that fends off the furry intruders.

I found this apparently dead bumblebee beneath our back door sill. Bees overwinter by digging into the soil, and I don't know whether this one was hibernating or what -- I don't know enough about bees to determine what kind it is (queen or worker). But it definitely appeared dead. I tucked it into a niche in our garden wall, just in case.

I took Olga to the vet to get her shots updated. Apparently they were due in December, so because we're several months late the vet is giving her two courses. We have to go back for the second ones in a few weeks. Olga also has a discolored canine tooth that appears to have been injured, probably by all her stick- and Kong-chewing -- the vet said a root canal is an option (!) but that just seems crazy to me. I told her we'd wait and see whether Olga exhibits any signs of discomfort. She doesn't seem at all bothered by it now.

Later, I took her on a walk. She was doing her best to get at the squirrels in that tree.

Here she is with some bluebells on the way home. She looks a bit glum, doesn't she? Probably wanted a longer walk.

I had a very sensible dinner last night -- black beans and rice, with tomatoes and hot sauce. I still haven't tackled the hearts of palm, and Dave comes back today, so those may wait until his next trip!

I've temporarily changed my evening cocktail from a gin & tonic to a rum & tonic, which sounds terrible -- but I got the idea online and it's surprisingly not so bad. I don't even like rum, but for some reason Dave and I have had three bottles of rum in our liquor cabinet for years now, and two of them were down to about a quarter of a bottle. (I think we found them that way in our Notting Hill apartment when we moved in -- left behind by our previous landlords.) Anyway, I figured I'd finish those off (over a period of weeks!) so we could get rid of those old bottles. One down, one to go. We'll keep the third one for incidental recipe and/or party use in the future!