What a relief it's been to have a lot of rain and a little coolness for the past 24 hours. We were determined to take advantage of the weather, as this may be the last pleasant day until mid September, and we did so by mowing and weed whacking before the rain, and then weeding afterwards. I hear that you're not supposed to dig in the soil when it's wet; it's bad for the soil structure or something. But wet soil is the best for weeding. It's so much easier to pull the weeds out by their roots.
Together we weeded almost the whole bank alond the driveway: I did the lower half of the bank, which can be reached from the driveway, and Georg got up on the slope and did the top by the fence. His part was harder because there's not a lot of room up there among the plants. Plus we stand on a board so as not to squash the soil too much, which makes it even more awkward. Since my part was easier, I had enough energy to keep going and weed the cutting garden, and most of the path around it, which had gotten totally overgrown. Also I finally pulled up the pansies, which had gotten really sad. They should have been taken out a month ago or more.
The flower garden is looking nice if I do say so myself. We seem to do best with the late summer flowers; I think this is because I first started gardening in late summer, two years ago. I planted things which were in bloom at the time, so our flowers are skewed towards blooming later rather than earlier. New this year are the sunflowers, which are doing really well. I want to plant more of them next year. Bees love them, and birds do too. This morning Georg and I saw a female goldfinch land on a sunflower, peck at it a bit, then get chased away by a male goldfinch who wanted the seed for himself. We have a big patch of sunflowers, plenty of room for everyone. But he had to have the one that someone else was eating from. I didn't know birds got territorial like that.
I also did some research for that picture frame project. I don't have any professional lighting, so we're going to shoot the frames outside, in a pretty garden courtyard with brick walls and ivy and terra cotta urns. I think the frames are going to look really nice, and plus it will be a lot less work than having to create a room setting for them. Because think about it, you can't have every frame on the same wall above the same piece of furniture. Each photo would have to look like a different room. Which would be a pain in the butt. This way will be much easier, and I think the frames will shine in a natural setting. We are going to need artificial lighting for a few of the photos on the shady side of the courtyard, but I can do that by putting my external flash on the tripod. Or, if I find that doesn't work, I'll have an excuse to buy some lighting.
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