First off, I bundled up the copy edited manuscript last night for IN TWILIGHT'S SHADOW and I'll Fed Ex it today on lunch. I was done with it on Friday night, but I spent all weekend working outside and never had time to actually pack it up. I hate to spend my lunch hour running an errand--the coworker from hell is off and it's a shame to waste the quiet when I could be writing--but the temperatures are going to plummet on Wednesday and I don't want to run around in the cold. Yes, I know I live in Minnesota.
The second item on my report of the day is the flower update. My dad had removed the tiger lilies from the tree ring by the time I got home from the EDJ, but he was still digging up roots when I joined him. Neither one of us expected moving these particular flowers to be difficult; after all, he just transplanted them from his yard like in June, and at the time he moved them, none of them had much root. Both of us figured it would be the same thing and we'd just shift them and all would be well. We were wrong.
As it turned out, the tiger lilies had roots everywhere and that is no exaggeration. Literally every millimeter of ground was loaded with a rat's nest of root structure. For more than two hours my dad and I were digging up soil and pulling out more tiger lily roots. Just when we thought we had it all, we'd find more. At one point, my dad suggested just leaving them, but I was concerned that the new bulbs wouldn't have any room to grow with all that other stuff in there.
When I saw how invasive this particular type of lily was, I said to my dad, instead of bunching them together in the tree ring, I think we better take them out of here all together. If we don't, they're going to take over completely and push out my other flowers. So after a brief discussion, we decided to plant them in the space next to my evergreens. Let them fight it out with the trees for root space. :-)
So the list of things that has to be done this afternoon is daunting. Not only do we have to plant the new bulbs, but we have to plant the tiger lily bulbs, put down weedkiller over both gardens, mulch the new garden and half the tree ring. We also need to mulch the tree peony and cover it for the winter. The other half of the tree ring has to wait until after the plants turn brown, then I'll have to cut them down and mulch them as well. Also on the list is yanking the flowers out of the deck and porch planters and getting rid of that dirt. We did have a hard freeze so most of the flowers are dead.
I can't believe how much work needs to be done before winter!
On the bright side, Mercury is almost out of retrograde. Yea!
