How hot is it?

It's so hot that the lace cap hydrangea is wilting.  Every day.  Even if I water it every day.  I give up.  I've moved it a couple of years ago, to a shadier spot, but that hasn't helped.

It's so hot that the purple basil is bleached white.  I turned the pot around so the purple plant is on the shadier side.  We'll see what happens.

It's so hot that the only thing to do is to sit inside with a big glass of iced tea.  What's better than homemade iced tea?  Homemade peach iced tea made with the syrup from last summer's canned peaches.  Mmmmmm. 

Hope it rains soon.

Sadness

For the last few weeks, my family has been watching a pair of Carolina wrens building a nest and feeding babies in a potted geranium on our deck.  We watched them build, then they seemed to disappear for about a week.  We wondered if they were on the nest, or if it was just a decoy, and the real nest was somewhere else.  Then they started bringing in food, taking turns bringing bugs to the babies.  Every time one of them came out, he (I think) would perch on the deck railing and belt out a song, before taking off in search of more bugs.  We managed to sneak a few peeks at the babies--they were very small and in a very dark nest, but we saw lots of pointed yellow beaks. 

Last night everything changed.  When we went into the kitchen this morning, we could see that the geranium pot had been knocked off the table, and the nest materials were scattered across the deck.   Apparently, a raccoon made a late-night raid.  There weren't even any little feathers left.  

I get the circle of life thing.  Really, I do.  But it broke my heart to see one of the parents come flying in with a bug in its mouth a few minutes later. 

I heard wrens singing in the back woods this afternoon.  They'll try again, someplace safer, I hope.  If we're lucky, they'll bring the babies to the birdbath in a few weeks, or feed them on the deck rail.

Lawn? Bah, Humbug.

I just finished mowing the lawn.  It took a little less than an hour.  When we moved to this house nine years ago, the lawn took over two hours.  We have a lot less lawn now, and a lot more flowers, shrubs, and vegetable beds.  Which is just fine with me.   At best, our lawn suffers from benign neglect.  At worst, I actively work to get rid of it. 

Not only do I prefer other plants to grass, but I'm uncomfortable with what it takes to maintain a showcase lawn.  In my gardening, I avoid pesticides and herbicides, and use as little chemical fertilizers as possible.  That same strategy makes for an ugly lawn.  I take some comfort in realizing that my lawn is not a monoculture of turf grass, but rather a thriving, diverse ecosystem.  I noticed dozens of species of plants out there this morning, plus two enormous rabbit (I hope!) holes.  There are grasses, but also sedges, clover, violets, mosses, and the odd mushroom.  There's even some Virginia creeper and a few red cedars encroaching from the woods.  As long as it's mostly green, and it doesn't take too much time, energy, or money, I'm happy with it.

Bees

I'm writing this on my front porch, drinking coffee and watching bees. There are so many bees on the holly tree next door that I can hear it buzzing. There must be hundreds of bees--bumble bees, little tiny bees, and even a few honeybees. As they make their rounds, they also visit my lavender, and even the sunflowers.

I've noticed a small hole at the edge of my porch, between the concrete slab and the brick edging. Some small species of bees has noticed it, too. Apparently, there's enough room down there for a colony. Bees are constantly coming and going, off pollinating the flowers and vegetable gardens in the neighborhood. I'll let them be busy today--it's my first day of summer vacation, and I'm trying to remember what relaxing feels like.

Sunflowers

One of my most frequent gardening laments is about how hard it is to grow the things I'm trying to grow, but how easy it is to grow weeds. This spring, however, I have a lovely border of sunflowers that I didn't plant. Last spring, I planted sunflower seeds nearby, only to have a monsoon a few days later that washed everything away--there was six inches of standing (and flowing) water where I'd just planted seeds. So maybe the seeds landed a few feet away, waited a year, then came up this spring. Or, more likely, the chipmunks or squirrels or blue jays buried the seeds there some time this winter (after getting them from the feeder in our backyard). Either way, they make me smile every morning.

Garlic!

This weekend I dug up the garlic. It's drying on my front porch. Tomorrow, I'll put it on screens in the garage to cure for a few days. We should have garlic into next spring! It smells wonderful.