Feeling the Heat

Summer is well and truly here, folks.  The highs have been in the 90's for the last several days and the humidity is just stupidly high.  Still, I can't seem to wipe this smile off my face.

*sigh*

Why do I love this weather?  It's hot, it makes my t-shirt stick to my back and the mosquitoes.  Oh my God the mosquitoes.  They don't usually like me, but I figure this year there must be so many of them that they take whoever they can find.

Lucky me.

But it also makes my garden grow like mad.  With the rain we've had and then the sun we've had, things are getting rather jungle like in the south 40.

Me and the insanely huge honeysuckle.

But I've been feeling the heat in other ways as well.  Work is ramping up to get super busy pretty soon.  The projects at home have more or less been on hold since we got back from vacation almost a month ago.  I'm so far behind on things in my life that I've taken a week off next week just to try to catch up. Here are  some of the things that I've been missing lately:

I found this little dragonfly resting on an onion.  He was there most of the day.  I'm hoping I get a chance to rest a bit as well.

I'm rather proud of my marigolds this year.  Here we find the French Dwarf marigolds in my backyard.  I like to plant marigolds in amongst my vegetable plants.  I hear they repel harmful insects.

This is a tiny hosta called 'Mouse Ears.'  I planted it near the new hardy kiwi plants in the 'wishing well' planter in the backyard.  They truly are tiny.  This plant is no more than 6 inches tall including the flowers.

I have developed quite a liking for clematis.  This purple one, the name of which escapes me at the moment, is gracing the new fence that my hubby built on the west side of the property.  Since I took this picture, I have added three others to this section of fence.  One is white and the other two are also different shades of purple.  They were supposed to be pink.  Dangit.  We still have a Sweet Autumn Clematis waiting impatiently in its pot for the fence on which it will grow to be built.  It is growing like mad in that little pot.

This little stunner is a gourd flower.  For some reason all of my gourd flowers are white this year.  The gourds I grew last year all had yellow flowers.  So, I turned to my little friend, Google.  Turns out that there are two different gourd genuses (genii?) one of which has yellow flowers and the other has white.  The ones with yellow flowers are all related to squash and melons which also have yellow flowers.  I have somehow managed to grow all of one genus last year and all of the other this year.  What a coincidence!

Onions and garlic and shallots, oh my!

Yep, that about covers it.

The first wave of onions has been harvested.  They came earlier than I thought they might.  I was surprised to go out yesterday and find the tops of many of the first batch lying over on the ground.  So I have a couple racks of onions drying on the patio.

Most of the shallots were dug today also.  I got A LOT of shallots from the 12 or so I planted in the spring.  They are also drying on the patio.

I got curious though.  As I was pulling out some onions that had gone to seed, I realized that many of the garlic plants had turned brown.  So I dug them up and found little, tiny garlic bulbs.  I don't know if they'll be useful or not, but they are also drying on the patio.

All this onion pulling left me with a nearly empty raised bed.  So, I decided to give green beans another shot.  I planted a bunch when we got back from vacation, but nothing happened.  Not a single one grew.  So, I'm shooting for a fall crop of beans.  We shall see.

Now I'm eyeing the place where the garlic was and wondering when I should plant more snap peas...hrm....

I love summer.

Garden Update 22 July 2012

It's been about a week since my last photo dump from the garden.  So here we go again.

A couple days after I discovered the squash vine borers, I decided I had nothing to lose but seeds.  So I poked some more squash seeds into the pot with the surviving squash plants.  Yes, I know the older plants look puny and I have no idea why.  Every other year I have grown squash they virtually took over the entire yard.  This year, not so much.  Maybe it's the pot.  Maybe they need fertilizer.  Maybe they're just puny squashes.  I don't know.  But as you can see in the photo, the new planting is coming up nicely and in record time!  The first set of seeds took almost 2 weeks to emerge from the soil.  This planting was up in 4 days. That's got to be some kind of record.

The Roma tomatoes are finally growing and flowering. No fruits yet, but there's still time.  These were really a last-minute, impulse purchase at a big box store that shall remain nameless. I was pretty happy to see these little flowers open up the other day. 

Remember this little guy?  Yes!  That's the first eggplant I ever grew from seed.  It's still hanging in there and has about doubled in size since the last time we looked at it.  I have not figure out yet when that variety of eggplant is ready to harvest.  The other eggplant, my second ever grown from seed (I promise I'll stop saying that bit about growing it from seed...someday), is about the size of my hand.  I read online that when they get to be about the size of your hand and have a shiny surface, they're ready to pick.  This little purple fella is going to be made into a hummus-like dip this weekend.  I will report the recipe and the results as soon as I get there.

 

Speaking of eggplants...I discovered this little, odd-looking eggplant last night as well.  The variety is almost certainly an Asian type but I haven't located the seed packet yet to determine the specific variety so I'll have to report back later.  It's certainly pretty.