Over a couple of days, we received a little more than an inch of much-needed rain.  By midweek, the top layer of prepared soil was moist enough to plant cool-season flowering annuals in raised beds.  Wednesday morning started out with clear blue skies and cooler temperatures. Lawn grasses are revived after almost two weeks of dry conditions.  And with temperatures to remain in the 80s, it’s time to apply a fall application of pre-emergent herbicide to control winter weeds that sprout from seed in the lawn.   The herbicide benefits from at least a half inch of rain or irrigation within two weeks for it to work.  Expected the first hurricane of the season by the weekend!  The storm tracked east of early predictions, bringing us cooler breezes from the northeast!(Sorry, Florida.) 
 The lawn renovation project I started last summer with solarization of the soil and sprigging Bermuda grass has been mostly a success.  I was skeptical that the solarization to kill weed seeds would not be hot enough to do the job. But the summer weed population that I expected did not materialize, and the Bermuda had little to no competition as far as weeds are concerned.  However, there was little to no control of weeds that had underground rhizomes or tubers like yellow nutsedge and stolons like Virginia buttonweed.   I’ll know in a couple of weeks if any winter weed seeds were affected by the solar project as those weeds start sprouting about mid to late October.  Since the forecast predicts dry weather, I’ll need to irrigate the herbicides I applied to the soil this week.