weeding again

We had fairly warm weather again today (in the mid to high 60s) so I was back on with weeding. I again had to weed my foundation beds, that stupid little weed just keeps coming up no matter how much mulch I put down. That did not take me too much of the day, a few hours in the morning.

Most of my day was consumed with trying to weed my camellia bed where the Three Toms are planted. I made several mistakes on this bed. First, when I initially planted the bed, I laid down a layer of cyprus mulch, but it was too thin to control weeds, so they grew up through it. Then, when I decided to add the pine bark mulch, instead of weeding the bed first, I just added the mulch over top the weeds, hoping it would kill the weeds (I'll admit to making this same mistake on the foundation beds as well). I am REALLY paying for it now as I believe today was the first time I have ever tried to weed this bed. I worked on it for most of the afternoon, and did weed out some from where the pine bark is, out into the initial cyprus mulch area. With all my work, I only got about 1/2 of the bed weeded. Actually less than half and I still have some weeds growing up between the first two camellias. My plan is to finish weeding out this area, maybe even weed it again and then add probably 2-3 additional bags of the pine bark mulch. I also need to weed the hydrangea again and probably add some more mulch to it as well.

Tomorrow the forecast is rain, so I am hoping to FINALLY get some of the painting left in the house done. I keep saying I'm going to do it and keep getting sidetracked in the yard. But, if it rains all day that will keep me inside and being Christmas day, I won't be able to go shopping instead.

I went down and checked out the other camellia bed, the one I weeded before I mulched and also mulched deeper. It is looking good as far as the weeds are concerned, BUT my Miss Biloxi that is on the far left hand side has now dropped almost all her buds. Add to this the fact the Debutante never seems to have made any buds in the first place and I only have one camellia (the other Miss Biloxi) left in that bed that has any real amount of buds on it. So, now the camellia on each end of the back fence area has suffered from bud drop. I hope it is just the temperature fluctuations doing them in, not any diseases. I am currently wondering if any camellias will actually bloom for me this year. Actually, I am wondering if ANYTHING will bloom... or even survive.