Memorial Day Weekend - Day 1

We here in Georgia are in another bad drought this year, for about the 10th year in a row. My grass is brown and crunchy. Because of the drought we are under watering restrictions, and they are the most severe yet. In the Atlanta area there is ABSOLUTELY NO WATERING ALLOWED Monday through Friday. If you live at an even-numbered address you are allowed to water on Saturdays, but ONLY from midnight to 10am. If an odd-numbered address those same hours but ONLY on Sundays. Hardly seems worth getting up at 2 am.

Last night on the news it was reported that 50 homes in Atlanta had their water service turned off completely due to ignoring the restrictions and watering anyway. I guess this year they are serious.

Because of the drought and the fact that I may be leaving for a prolonged period of time later in the summer I made the decision that I would not plant anything at all this year. What I'm doing instead is covering my planting beds with pine straw in the hopes that it will keep the weeds under control. It also looks a lot nicer than bare soil.

My goal for today was to get this done in the beds I've already worked on. If you go back a couple or few posts you'll see the before photo of this first one:

The next two beds are on the side entrance of my house and in 8 years I've never been able to make them work. I can't get rid of the weeds no matter what I do and because the toxic "trash" from the black walnut tree poisons most everything I've attempted to grow there I have to admit it was a relief to just cover it with pine straw:
By 1:30 I had finished my goal for the day plus a little more. I took a shower and plan to read for a little while and cool off in the A/C then maybe I'll put together a grocery list and brave Kroger and be that much more ahead tomorrow! There are also some little nagging 30 minutes things that have been on my list for a while so maybe I'll try to knock some of them off too.