Dawn, prayers for you and your family. Been there too many times with our parents on both sides, grandparents, sister, uncles who were as close as parents. Been down the MRSA and all the other infectious “gown up first “ roads too many times to count. My heart goes out to you. Nobody who hasn’t lived that understands the number of emotions you go through.

Peace and comfort for all of you.

My garden plans this week are similar to yours. Water what is worth keeping alive and is producing. Unlike you I have only had a FEW tomatoes, not counting the cherry tomatoes so not giving up on those but will probably pick off the bigger ones to ripen inside so they won’t turn to mush in the predicted heat. Should have a nice mess of purple hull peas in a few days and the okra (especially the Baby Bubba) is really coming on strong. I noticed the green beans are starting spider mites so will pick off every tiny bean and put those vines on the burn pile. Will wait for cooler temps to replant squash, beans, and cucumbers.

As for flowers the cosmos and begonias look great, the hibiscus are covered in blooms. I planted purple millet from saved seed that everything I read said it would not be true but it’s gorgeous I will plant more next year.

Everyone please heed the warnings about heat index and getting too hot. It’s not worth taking a chance on.

Dawn, sorry to hear about your mother. I just went through the same with my mom, she died on May 8, but everything was wonderful. I got to spend as much time as I wanted with mom for the past 5 year. I was able to help her get out of an unhappy and neglectful home and help give her some happiness the last 5 years of her life. I do believe she is in a better place.

I do need to do some work in the garden. My tomatoes are not doing much, but I have only watered them about 3 times this summer. I did finally put up a hot wire to protect my Texas Big Boy, PEPH peas and sweet potatoes. I planted more Red Ripper peas, millet and clover yesterday, and plan on planting more this afternoon, these are all going in the wildlife garden. I know it's not a good time to plant anything. But I am just trying to get rid of some old seeds, and hoping that we may get some rain from the gulf. It has been cooler with a good light wind today. We also picked our okra for the second time today and some of our peas are starting to bloom. Everything is late, but it wont be a complete shutout.

Dawn, prayers of comfort for you, your mom and family. I wish there was more I could say but, well, you know.

Two boys - well, men now - brothers I used to babysit died recently. The first had cancer so far progressed when found that he chose not to treat it. He passed about a month ago. Last weekend, his brother passed from a broken heart as I’m told. He had high blood pressure or something and his heart couldn’t handle the strain of grief. They were in their mid-30s. But it just reiterated how much grief can take an emotional and physical toll. Please take care of yourself.

I ripped out most of the dwarf tomatoes over the last two weeks and replaced them with fresh Cherokee purple plants I found at Home Depot. I picked several green tomatoes off my last CP because it was so damaged by spider mites that there weren’t enough leaves left to photosynthesize. I found a recipe for a Po’ Boy Salad with fried green toms that sounds A-MAZ-ING.

I just ordered sweet potato slips from Sand Hill. I had only 5 slips of my own anyway. My sweets struggled last year and struggled to produce slips, but I figured it would just be a rebound growing year. Then Jill the Pill started digging them up. I was able to rescue them a few times but she won and I’m down to 2 slips. I have the remnants of a third inside in water hoping it will root. A couple weeks ago, I had been looking up info on a variety so I knew they were still shipping. So when Jill dug them this last time I hurried to the post office that night with my order. I also put fencing around potterville where they’re growing. Oh, Jill broke my toe too. I don’t know if it’s technically broken but it’s double it’s normal size and all black and blue. It hurt bad the first two days but is not as bad today. I did hear a pop or snap when it happened.

I need to put tarps down to solarize a couple areas so I can work them when the weather cools. We’re headed for the lake later this week and it would be nice if I had time to get the tarps down before we leave to take advantage of the heat but I doubt I’ll have time. I have our company’s annual bring your kids (pre-teen or teen) event this week so there are quite a few late nights in my future. We’re leaving the next morning.

That’s about all from here.

Oh, Dawn. I'm sorry you're going through it. Blessings to you all from here. I'm glad to hear you say your mother is ready. She must be so very tired after all she has gone through since dialysis began. Oh God bless her. We'll be thinking of you and the rest of her family.

How in heaven's name did Jill the Pill break your toe, Megan?! I hate it when toe is hurt! A pop does sound like a broken one--the big toe, I take it? And sad news of the brothers.

Oh brother! I messed up. I planted cucumbers and squash; forgot that's where the new tomatoes go! Aggh. Well. I'll just have to carefully dig up the cucumbers and squash and move them. Idiot self. I have bunches of new seedings to put. Somewhere. lol Maybe I'll go take out stuff that's not doing as well as I'd like. And speaking of seedlings. farmgardener--I'd never seen purple millet before. It's beautiful! phone call. . . later. Happy gardening1

Dawn, praying for you and your family. I'm glad hospice will keep your Mom comfortable and she feels ready move on to her next "life". I know it's not easy for you and your family, though.

I've been too busy chickening to do much with the garden.

However, I brought in a nice basket of Juliets, cucumbers and beans.

And a few other tomatoes. I think I'm over-watering (except the Juliet) them because they look so awful... and I'm just sure that they need more water when they probably do not. The ones I've eaten over the past couple of days have tasted watered down.

Surprisingly there's a few strawberries to harvest tomorrow.

Yesterday, I planted fresh beans and southern peas seeds.

I've stared the process of pulling out old bean plants that are very diseased. I hope their disease doesn't stay in the soil because I poked the new bean seeds in between the old plants. My beans didn't make oodles of beans, but enough for us to enjoy them with a meal once a week and to have several batches put in the freezer. I am pleased.

I'm bringing in fresh bouquets of zinnias this summer and that is nice. They need to be cleaned up though. They are starting to get some sort of disease on their foliage.

Swallowtail caterpillars are visiting my overgrown herb bed.

I cleaned out the salad garden bed too.

I have several things on my list to do outdoors tomorrow. It's supposed to be the last "cool" day for awhile.

Yesterday and today were "cool" here (at least it felt a lot cooler than earlier in the week) so I got out and pulled weeds & dumped some mulch. Signed up for chipdrop and hopefully I'll get a load soon. We have several holes we need to fill in thanks to the pups digging, plus I want to smother the garden beds this winter and get something other than red clay in there. I noticed a bunch of seedlings popped up in my tomato and pepper containers (down side to recycling soil you planted seeds in) so once they pop up I'll have to figure out what to do with them. And I moved some inside plants to my front porch.

Dawn, you guys are in my thoughts. I went through a similar thing with mom, so I can relate.

Dawn, for me the best thing was to remember at the quality of life she probably endures, things may be for the best (at least it was for me when I lost my mom).

The hot humid air is being hard on lots of plants. This is the 2nd season when I lose plants, hot wet soil...when drying potential is nil (humidity).

Thank you all for your kind words. I appreciate them so much. This is something we all go through and, as an adult child, you try to prepare yourself for it since you know it eventually will happen, but I am not sure anything makes it any easier. Of course we don't want our mom to suffer and her quality of life on dialysis has been pretty poor for quite a while now, so I know we are doing what is best for her. I do. I also feel like my feelings are pretty raw anyway as a very dear friend (sort of a surrogate father to us ever since we both lost our dads in 2004) is in the hospital here in town with Stage 4 cancer in his spine, his bones and now, his lungs, and his time left on this earth is short and very much filled with intense pain. His quality of life is worse than my mom's at this point and I see his entire family in such pain over his suffering. Life is pretty tough sometimes, yet we all are so blessed in so many ways, aren't we? Even when we suffer the loss of someone we love, I remind myself that it is a privilege in the first place just to have people in your life that you do love so much. I am grateful for all the love and support that friends show for one another at times like this. The whole 'gown up before you enter the room' thing with my mom was very shocking the first time, but then I got over it. I certainly don't want to contract MRSA so I don't complain about doing it or resent doing it.

Farmgardener, My remaining row of beans that has remained in production despite the heat is spider mite city and I'm wondering what all the spider mites will flock to after I pull those plants. It probably is anybody's guess. Maybe the nearby okra plants will be their next victim. I'm going to harvest all the good beans I can this week and yank out the plants and throw them on the compost pile. I should be out there doing that this morning, but I know the minute I get out there and get all hot and sweaty, the roofing crew will arrive, so I'm killing time until they get here and get started.

The beds where I planted cleome, cosmos, zinnias and candletrees after harvesting my main tomato crop just began blooming in abundance this weekend, and that's not bad. They went from young, small seedlings to blooming plants in just a few weeks. The candletrees won't bloom until autumn since I planted them so late, but everything else is blooming---including cosmos in a color that I don't remember planting, so maybe that plant is a volunteer from last year's plants one bed north or a stray seed mixed in with this year's seed packets, since I thought I only planted white cosmos. Maybe I added a pink or red variety and just don't remember doing it. I was thinking this morning when I was out feeding the wild birds that a veggie garden full of happy flowers looks a little odd---flowers as row crops look different from flowers in drifts in regular flower beds---but I am happy to have them regardless. They look a lot better than tired vegetable plants.

My purple millet that reseeded years ago was the same as yours---just as pretty as the millet grown from expensive hybrid seeds. I didn't even save seeds---they just volunteered and I almost pulled them because everything I had read said they wouldn't come true from seed, but I left them and they were just as pretty and just as vigorous in growth.

Larry, I am amazed at how many of us have been down this road with our mom's just the last few years. I guess we're all getting older and it is inevitable.

It sounds like your garden is doing really well after such a rough spring with just the worst weather ever. I know we need rain, but why oh why does it only come in two amounts here: too much at once or not enough. Why can't we get nice, steady, consistent rainfall amounts instead of the extreme ones? As the fields dry up here and there's less and less fresh, tender shoots for the deer to browse, they are roaming the yard more and more looking for something/anything that they consider palatable. It is hard to have a nice landscape here because the deer eat anything/everything when they get hungry.

Megan, I am so, so sorry about the two brothers. My heart is broken for their family and friends. They were too young to go and to lose both so close together is just so sad. You know, our friend who is in the hospital is sort of in the same boat, only he is in his 80s so at his age this sort of thing is expected. About 2 weeks ago his brother was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. He died one week later. Our friend couldn't go to his own brother's funeral because of his medical condition, which was devastating for him. I hate seeing families get his with one loss stacked on top of another as it is just so much to bear.

I think that Jill needs to get her act together, and quickly, or she is going to end up on Santa Claus' naughty list. How did she break your toe?

I also have plants to tarp a couple of areas to solarize them, but I'm waiting for the roofers to do their job and then leave before I do that, so it will be a few more days before I can put down the tarps.

Nancy, That sounds like something I would do---putting in plants in a place I had meant to reserve for other plants. Luckily I usually have somewhere else to cram in the plants so that everybody can grow, even in not in the precise area where I thought they'd be growing.

Jennifer, Having diagnosed your overwatering issue, I hope you can make yourself stop watering too much. Just because the plants are struggling, that doesn't mean they need water. What they probably need is for the heat to back off and let up a bit, which this week is not going to happen, and for the pests to go away too. July weather is so hard on tomatoes. At the time I was yanking out my main crop of tomatoes, it was the hardest thing in the world to do, but I had met my preserving goals and knew I didn't want to battle heat, disease and pests on them all summer, so now I am relieved they are gone....while also being relieved that the plants in containers near the house continue to produce. I saw tiny new tomatoes on them this morning, and in a day or two, the first ripe tomato from a compost pile plant will be ready to harvest. I think the variety is Mule Team based on the size and shape of the fruit.

My zinnias got some brown spots on their leaves in all the heavy rains we had a while back. Is that what you're seeing on yours? I just pulled off the old sick leaves, and healthy new leaves grew to replace them.

It sounds like your garden is doing well overall. Really, I think all of us should be pretty proud that we brought our gardens through such a horrendously wet, flooding type of spring and they all are doing so well now. We are lucky to have a long enough growing season that we can replant and succession plant and just carry on.

Jen, It definitely felt cooler here the last couple of days too, but I think the heat returns as early as tomorrow. We're expecting the mid to upper 90s and, at least in some parts of OK, I think the 100s are within reach this week. Yuck. I am not a fan of that sort of heat. I was thinking yesterday that we are halfway through summer so, in terms of summer heat, hopefully it is all downhill from here. Of course, the downside is that daylength is steadily shortening now even though I think it isn't real obvious that the days are getting shorter until August at least.

Have you tried signing up for Chipdrop to see if you can get mulch that way? Then you could move it to the areas you want to smother and improve for next year.

dbarron, All of you are right and I know it is for the best. Truly I do. Intellectually it all makes sense and I am even glad that we adult children can agree on this and take the right steps for her, but in my heart, I feel like a child terrified at the thought of losing my last parent. If only my heart would listen to my brain!

When you lose plants in this hot, humid part of the year, it is because of foliar diseases that get them? Or root rot type things? I just hate to hear that this is a regular part of your gardening year. Does the same thing happen with native plants? Because (correct me if I am wrong) I thought that you had incorporated a lot of native plants into your plantings.

It took me a long time here to get used to the way that the native plants in our fields ebb and flow, and it varies so much depending on the weather. Certain forbs will flourish in wet springs and summers while others almost disappear....and then we will have some dry years and everything switches---the plants that disappeared in the wet years magically reappear and the ones that thrived in wet years disappear. It blows my mind sometimes. The one plant that never seems to suffer enough to go away? The darned old Johnson grass. It is just as bulletproof as bermuda grass. I hate them both.

Have a good day y'all. I suspect I'm going to have a loud day with roofers pounding away overhead, but it will be good to get this project completed. Now, I'm just hoping we can go for a while without any sort of roof-damaging storms so our soon-to-be-new roof can look good for a while.

Dawn

The roofers are here and, while standing and looking at the roof, I just realized they'll have to take down our wireless receiver and we aren't going to have the internet for a few days. Oh, I am going to be SO bored. I'll be back here whenever they finish and the wireless receiver is back in place again.

I am so sorry to hear about your mother, Dawn. I am glad she will be in a hospice facility. My mother had home hospice and I can't say her last hours were serene. I hope a facility can control your mother's pain better.

Last week when it was cooler and nice I had 4 doctors appointments. (It just happened that 2 doctors scheduled things that way) I would have been happier in the garden and they didn't figure anything out. Sigh.

I have cucumbers sprouting, and okra I'm transplanting. I know, okra doesn't transplant well, but I soaked the seeds week before last when it was so hot I couldn't bare to be outside. So I put them in paper cups on the light shelf. They're on the patio table now, and I'm gradually getting them in the ground. We'll see what happens. I should soak a few extra seeds to put in the ground when they're transplanted.

I want to start fall brassica this week, and some kind of ornamental to put in the pansy pots as they're now showing heat stress. I have slicing tomatoes in various stages of ripeness lined up on the counter. One from yesterday tasted watered down, or maybe it was one Ron brought in that hadn't broken color yet. I didn't think it was as good as it should have been. I have not watered tomatoes this year, we got some rain that you didn't get down south or west. Just watering new things. It will come, I don't see rain in the future this week. It clouded up and pretended it would rain last night. It moved east I think.

We had dinner with Eileen and Larry and Nancy and Garry Saturday. (Japanese at Hapa in Owasso). It was fun as always, just seems like you can't sit in a restaurant long enough for visiting. Sunday we had dinner with a friend we've known since before we got married. That was lovely, too. Do this while it's too hot to garden. Visit someone you haven't seen in a while!

I will have to go to Bartlesville this week. I didn't go last week.

Everyone have a good week!

Hey, y'all, the roofers haven't killed our internet yet. Hooray for them! Check your weather if you do not get weather alerts on your phone. Many of us are in areas that have been placed under a Heat Advisory for tomorrow, which includes maximum heat index values of 105-110. On my point forecast just now, it says we will have a heat index tomorrow of 107. The last time they said that....we went to 116, so I hope they are right about the 107. Here's the NWS Norman webpage. If you scroll down a little, you can see the map showing all the counties that currently have that Heat Advisory issued for tomorrow.

NWS-Norman

Amy, Thank you. I know that you just went through this so recently yourself. I am sorry your mom's hospice experience wasn't so wonderful. My only experience with an in-facility hospice situation was with my dad in 2004 and it was incredible, so we're hoping to get lucky once again. Honestly, in cases like this, maybe it is just the luck of the draw? Who knows?

Have your doctors figured out anything about your vertigo after those tests? I know that horticulturalist Neil Sperry has struggled with severe vertigo since 2016 and his is somehow related to the migraines from which he suffers. Because it is not the kind related to crystals in one's ears, the Epley maneuver and other similar things do not bring him any relief. I wish I could remember the name of the kind he has because it might lead you down some other research path. I did learn from things he has written about it that 10% of the population suffers from vertigo. I had no idea! I have had vertigo, briefly, once or twice and it is a crazy feeling, but mine was so brief that I really think I had gotten dehydrated or had gone all day without eating or something similar because the vertigo didn't persist and didn't become a regular issue either.

I think your okra plants will be fine. One reason that okra doesn't transplant well is that people start it too early indoors, hold it indoors for too long and then transplant it into the ground while soil temperatures still are too low. Growing conditions are perfect for okra now and I bet yours will take off after being transplanted. I've noticed when I start okra indoors that it does much better if I transplant it while it still is very small.

I dread the weather for the rest of this week. It just looks too hot and too miserable. I feel bad for our roofers and hope they don't have to be up on a hot roof in those high heat index values tomorrow. I know it is what they do, but a person can tolerate only so much heat and surely they must push the limits on these hot days.

I kept the cats and dogs indoors so the roofers wouldn't have to deal with them being underfoot or in the way, and the dogs are hiding as if we are having a thunderstorm, lol, while the cats blissfully sleep through it all. The chickens are confined to their coop/fenced chicken run as well.

I may have to water the garden tomorrow morning very early, like as soon as the sun comes up. Some of the zinnias were looking very dry earlier (the kind of dry where their foliage starts twisting and curling as their flower heads droop) and I'm just hoping they can handle one more day before they're watered again.

Here's today's Max Heat Index map. It doesn't look so bad today---certainly nothing like it will look tomorrow.

Max Heat Index Map

Dawn

You and your mom are in my thoughts, Dawn.

Now is the time of year that I just let everything go, and only worry about watering, feeding, and harvesting. Everyone got a drink of blue stuff today, and I have bacon in the oven for BLTs this week. I sent a big bag of cherry tomatoes to Texas with my mom for the week. Sis is working, brother in law has work trips, nephew has parkour camp, and niece needs driving practice. All I’m doing is working this week.

I should clean out my seed box and get it set up with fall seeds. I started a few jugs with mixed zinnias, snapdragons, and Teddy Bear sunflowers, to fill in some gaps out front. But now I’m thinking about lettuce and spinach and carrots.

I have a cosmos tree. Thick trunk, a good 5 feet tall, lush, but has never bloomed. It’s never been fertilized (I know not to) and never watered other than with rain. No flowers.

My okra is still about a foot tall. I think it just got too much rain. It’s not too late to start more?

Dawn, the zinnias have powdery mildew, I think. I'm not sure why. I pruned them quite a bit today.

Also, potted up the fall tomatoes. They don't look great--are very, very small especially the Ark. Traveler. The EGs are a decent size, I guess. I shouldn't have started them before going to Colorado. Oh well. It is what it is. This isn't my year for tomatoes. I am happy to have the Juliets, Sungold and few "slicers" that I'm getting. But...

Other things are doing very well.

Rebecca, you might as well try to start more. I would. I just started more southern peas a couple of days ago. Okra flowers are so pretty. My deal with okra is getting enough the same size at the same time. I've thought about tilling up a 40ft. strip and planting okra there in the future. I think you have to grow a lot of it to get enough the same size at the same time. IF that makes sense. The flowers are pretty enough to just grow it for fun, though, and the bees seem to like them too.

Amy, so glad you, Nancy, and Eileen had a fun lunch together. It's so cool that y'all meet up.

I'm trying to get motivated to go outside. I'm actually very sleepy right now. It's that eating dinner early thing that makes me so sleepy. BUT, we're still doing that "challenge" and need to eat a little earlier than 9 pm which is my favorite time to eat during the summer.

The chickies are doing well. I have a couple of situations, but for the most part all is well. Stormy is a good momma after all. I'm so glad I gave her a second chance. She's mean, though. She fluffs up and bites me. LOL. She wants NO one near her babies. So glad she took both of the bantams which I didn't need after all.

Dawn (or anyone who has chickens), have you kept standard and bantams together in the same flock?

Okay. Up and at 'em.

Get ready for the extreme heat, Everyone. My least favorite type of weather.

Thanks, Rebecca.

All you're doing is working this week? That sounds like plenty to me. I feel like there is only so much that we can ask our bodies to do in this sort of heat. It is nice that your mom is able to go stay with your niece while everyone else is tied up.

No, not to late for okra, and last year when we add a lot of rain early in the year, my okra took forever to start blooming too. So, I started some more, put it in the ground, and then all the okra bloomed and produced pods together at the same time and I had a hard time keeping it all picked in a timely manner.

As for your cosmos tree, some cosmos are just late bloomers. It will bloom. Most, if not all, cosmos are short-day plants. They bloom best when day length has begun to shorten substantially for fall. When day length still is 14 hours or greater, they do not bloom much. I am not sure if this is as true for the most recent introductions, but is it true for the older varieties...even the ones that were new varieties themselves just a few years back. Our daylength here should drop below 14 hours by the end of the month, and we probably aren't too far from that 14 hours now. Every now and then a cosmos will bloom earlier than it ought to but I have no idea why. I have a shorter cosmos, so I'm guessing it is White Popsocks, that has had a bud for two weeks that hasn't opened. I guess the daylength isn't right for it yet....but then why did it form a bud? For all that researchers can tell us about how specific types of plants ought to perform, they seem less able to tell us why some plants won't do what they say they will.

Jennifer, Zinnias are very prone to powdery mildew in hot, dry conditions. This is a case where it is okay to get water on the zinnia leaves because it may help wash off the leaves and reduce the incidence of PM. I still hate getting water on their leaves, though, because that always seems to lead to some other disease.

Yes, we have mixed standard and banty breeds many times and they have done fine. You can get some odd chicks out of that combination because a standard rooster will breed with a banty hen, and your chick can be a hilarious combination of both. Stormy is biting you because she is such a good mom and wants to protect her babies from everyone. I have had chickens run 25' across the yard to peck at me just because I dared to look at their babies. lol. It is cute to see how fiercely protective they are.

The extreme heat we're expecting tomorrow is my least favorite form of weather too. I can tolerate a lot of heat with lower dewpoints much more than I can tolerate lower heat with much higher dewpoints. In some drought years, the dewpoint is so low that the heat index is lower than the actual temperature. I love that. Unfortunately, that's not what we're having this year.

The roofers were awesome today. They were so incredibly focused, efficient and quick that they got the entire roof done today, leaving right around sunset. They got to a point in late afternoon where they wondered if they could finish by dark and not return tomorrow, but weren't sure if they could. Well, they did. It probably helped that it is a two story house, so had a lot fewer square feet of roofing to do than there would have been if we had the same square footage in a single story home. Tomorrow they start work at the home of someone we know about 3 miles north of us, but that is a single story home they think will take 2 or 3 days....in hot, miserable weather. They recently put new roofs on the homes of two of our other friends....one just a couple of houses up the road and another a little over a mile away as the crow flies. It appears a whole lot of us are getting new roofs this year,

I'm looking forward to peace and quiet tomorrow, and will only venture out to the garden for a little while before it gets too hot. It still is 80 degrees here at 11 pm, so I'm thinking maybe it isn't going to cool down too much tonight. I noticed that the cold tap water was really warm this morning when I filled up the dog's water dish, so I added ice cubes. In a little under 7 weeks it will be September. It might not be much cooler in Sept than in Aug, but I still feel better in Sept....maybe it is the shorter day lengths.

Dawn

I worked in the garden as long as I could, doing what weeding I could in places that weren't so thickly planted that snakes could be hiding out of sight, and came in at 10:15 am. When I went out this morning around 7 am, the heat index already was 88 so I didn't think I'd last long. I actually lasted longer out there than I though I would. By the time I came indoors our Heat Index was 100 and I'd had enough. We had a breeze so it didn't feel as horrible as it sounds....until, suddenly, it did, When the heat began to bother me, then I wondered what in the world was I thinking staying out there weeding in that heat? lol. I chose the weediest bed that wasn't along a fence line (those are potentially too likely to be harboring snakes). I think that maybe there have not been a lot of snakes yet because all the frogs haven't disappeared. At least there's that.

The weeds were interesting...lots of little crabgrass sprouting, some other grass I can't ID...and I need to figure out what it is, and tons and tons of regular morning glories--tons of them in an area where I never planted them. Yet, hardly any bindweed. It usually is tons of bindweed and a few morning glories. It is interesting how much things change from one year to the next.

I did look at that first cosmos that is blooming and I can tell from where it is planted (right where a tomato plant had been) that I planted it and it was not a volunteer, which means I planted some rose-colored and pink ones even though I thought I had only planted white ones. Its all good, and the rose colored one is the one that's blooming earliest, so I need to figure out its name so I can remember to plant that variety for early blooms in future years. I need to research some of the newer, shorter ones for next year because I am pretty sure that some of those, when I grew them in the past, bloomed pretty early so didn't have a strong photoperiodic trait if they had one at all.

When I came indoors, the dogs raced in the door with me, almost hysterically, like they were going to die if they stayed out another minute. They love the air conditioning even more than I do. Cats are still out and are content to find a cool spot in the shade and ride out the heat there. They are fascinated with the new roof. I don't know if it is because the shingles are a different color and that catches their eye or if they just are staring at it because they had to listen to the roofers working yesterday or what, but I bet Pumpkin will be up on the roof exploring it in a day or two, as soon as he is positive there's no roofers hiding up there to scare him. A day of peace and quiet ought to make the cats forget about yesterday.

Stay cool and hydrated everyone!

I have done very little in the veggie garden, but have been pulling sprouts in the wildlife garden. It is a lot harder work than weeding my veggie garden. Some of the sprouts are about 5 or 6 inches at the base.

My peas and sweet potatoes have rebounded nicely after stringing a hot wire.

My largest zinnia bed in the wildlife garden, there are three more smaller and newer than this one.

Wildlife garden from about center to south . The thicket on the right is too thick to walk through. Notice that my Lading clover is still blooming, it has been blooming for months.

Wildlife garden from west to east. The large thicket is to the right. I just planted more peas, clover and millet.

I just saw the most beautiful gray squirrel, it looked as the it may have been a cross with a fox squirrel.

Larry, Your garden looks so wonderful. I especially love your wildlife plants. Those zinnias make my heart sing. I always grow zinnias because they are the first flowers I remember from my childhood, along with rose, cannas and those giant cockscombs. I think my dad grew them all because they are so tough and can tolerate summer so well. I don't know if there is anything that attract butterflies better than zinnias will.

With all the rain that has fallen, I'm not surprised your landino clover is happy. The clovers we have in the yard and pastures now are curling up and looking pathetic---no happy bloomers here now. It is 100 degrees, we are incredibly dry and.....ain't nobody happy. I even convinced a semi-feral cat, Big Boy, who roams our neighborhood to come into the cool mudroom to drink water, eat canned food and sleep on the cool tile floor. At the time I persuaded him to trust me enough to come through that door, the heat index was 112. I don't know if he especially trusted me or just was desperate to get out of the heat. I'm hoping I can keep him in there until the air cools off this evening. There are three other feral cats that run with him, but they are wilder and won't let me get close to them....otherwise I'd have them sleeping in the mudroom with him.

We already have a new Heat Advisory up for tomorrow. This week is a repeat of last week. I'm over it. I'm watching a Christmas movie on the Hallmark Channel (apparently Christmas in July is a thing they do) and dreaming of cooler weather. I'm not hoping for Christmas or an early winter....just some relief from these insane heat index values.

Everything still looks so green there! We are going full-blown brown now, scattered in with existing green. Even our bermuda grass is turning brown (because y'all know I don't water it and constantly hope for it to die).

I figured out the horrible grass that is sprouting in a couple of places in my garden. It is goose grass. Well, when I get through pulling or digging (even when only 3" tall, it is very hard to pull out of the ground) it out tomorrow morning, it is going onto the compost pile where I hope it will become cooked goose grass.

Dawn

Dawn, thank you. I enjoy the wildlife garden a lot. I spend more time and money over there, but I am trying to improve the land, build wildlife habitat, and make a prettier home site. The veggie garden is getting harder for Madge and me to do. Most of the wildlife garden work can be done from a tractor seat. I also dont feel the pressure that I HAVE to do something over there.

Larry, I agree that it is more fun when the pressure is off. Succession planting flowers to replace veggies as they finished up has taken so much of the pressure off of me that I may switch to growing only flowers, or perhaps only flowers and herbs with tomatoes and peppers growing in pots by the back door. I don't miss having to worry about keeping the edible plants alive, harvesting, tending them, fretting over somebody's herbicide drift hitting them or anything else like that. For some reason, it bothers me less if ornamental plants have summertime issues than it does when edible ones do.

I keep telling Tim we learn to work smarter, not harder, as we age because I don't know what we'll be capable of, physically, 5 or 10 or 15 years down the road. We need to find ways to maintain the landscape and garden without killing ourselves doing it.

We were hot today here y'all. Here's the OK Mesonet Map that shows the highest heat index value recorded today at each Mesonet station. Some of these numbers are just ridiculous:

OK Mesonet Map: Current Day's Maximum Heat Index Values

Tomorrow is expected to be the same in some areas, and worse in others. I know it is July, but we need a break. As long as the dewpoints stay high, so will the misery factor. At our house, ever since it got so hot and dry we have been bothered less and less by mosquitoes, so at least there is that.

I hope to be outdoors around sunrise tomorrow so I can do more weeding in the more clear areas...like pathways and the edges of beds. I do know better than to stick my hand into any area where I cannot clearly see that a venomous snake is not present. It still has not been the worst snake year ever, but that doesn't mean much in July. There's still plenty of time for more snakes to be out and about.

We have excessive heat warning here, and I have a tree trim and removal crew working in my wildlife garden. It cost big bucks, but I cant do things like that anymore. I am trying to get everything as nice as I can before my daughter takes over this place. She is a little tight, and it takes money and work to care for a place properly. I have taught her to use the brush hog and sprayer, that and renting the land should more than pay for the up-keep.

The heat warning must be pretty much state-wide. Heat index here is only 104, temp is only 93! That's good! I was out weeding in shady spots but still only managed to last about 90 minutes before coming in, drenched. I'll go back out in a little while.

Loved seeing your garden areas, Larry and wish I had some large sunny areas--I love the shadiness but just would like a few sunny areas, too. And I am so touched by your relationship with your daughter. That is just lovely!

Dawn--that is one ugly map! SHEESH. I think of you as having much hotter weather than we do, but it looks like the entire state is just plain HOT.

One of my beds next to the deck is full of crabgrass. And I have put off weeding there, because that's right next to the area under the deck where the dead critter is. I WISH we'd get over that! LOL Gross. Garry keeps saying he guesses he'll investigate, but I don't want him going through all that hassle! I keep telling him eventually the smell will go away.

We'll go get groceries later, and I think grab a couple Subway sandwiches. As hot as it is, the idea of eating hot food is not acceptable to me today.

I've had my nose into studying up on butterflies and butterfly gardens. Again, a couple sunny spots would be good. Whine whine whine. Meanwhile, in this, my fourth year gardening here, I have seen crazy murdering wasps EVERYWHERE and especially in that center bed where I have all the pollinator plants. And of course, it makes me sad since I'm seeing swallowtail cats being murdered. :( It's a dangerous world out there in insect land.

I have cukes and my large Seminole squash in (Dawn--lol), jumped the gun a little, but just couldn't wait. I got totally sidetracked, cleaning house, of all the ridiculous things. I have no idea what got into me! That's crazy stuff! Time to go shopping. Take care, everyone! XOXO

Larry, It is smart to hire those tree guys to do that difficult work. I know it is big bucks, but is so much safer.

I was just chatting with a neighbor who is a firefighter with our VFD and he said he is wildlife gardening this year, but not the same way that you are. The deer are devouring everything in his garden---even have eaten his pepper plants right down to the ground. I told him he needed an 8' tall fence around his garden like I have around mine. Another friend of of ours calls my garden fence the prison fence, which just makes me laugh, but what counts is that the deer aren't eating anything inside the prison fence. They do nibble any plant stupid enough to grow through the fence where they can reach it.

Nancy, I think y'all have worse heat index numbers today, but we had worse ones yesterday. The center of the high pressure system shifted in your direction and brought y'all the higher temperatures and higher dewpoints we had been having, while we got some slight relief. I just came in from a big fire and collapsed on the sofa to cool off, and as hot as we all were out there, the heat index was only 103. If we'd been out there at the same time yesterday, it would have been about 112. For tomorrow, those of you with Excessive Heat Warnings today should have the same things in place, and those of us with Heat Advisories today should have the same things in place. Another day. Same old weather stuff. On the Texas side of the river, they are not (currently) supposed to have a Heat Advisory tomorrow, so that's a good sign, I suppose.

Here's today's current Max Heat Index Map:

Maximum Heat Index Values for the Current Day

I need to run to town in a little while and pick up some cases of Gatorade because they used up the ones I had here in the extra refrigerator. I just thought it would be nice to sit inside and cool down for a little while first. Meanwhile, before our firefighters even could leave the fire we were at (I'd already left), they got paged out to another fire about 1 mile up the interstate. This one is only grass. The first one this afternoon was a pick-up truck pulling a 5th-wheel RV, and then they set the grass on fire, and it spread pretty quickly. The grass looks green still, but is on the dry side of green turning brown, and it catches fire quickly and spreads quickly. The fields look surprisingly green, but when you get into one of them, there's a ton of brown, dry, dead or dormant stuff mixed in, so that explains the daily fire calls. Our front pasture is exactly the same--a lot of brown mixed in with green, and the green is less green daily. Our bermuda grass is turning brown, but I consider that a positive, not a negative.

I made it home from the fire and brought Big Boy into the mudroom to cool off, and he is not at all appreciative of the cool indoor air and wants to go back out. Being semi-feral, he doesn't like being brought in, but if he stays in for only an hour or two and cools down, maybe he'll get over being mad. He is sitting at the French door staring through the glass at me with hatred in his eyes. lol lol lol. I can handle it. I just don't think it is a bad thing to cool down a hot cat who generally stays outdoors 24/7. I'd like to tame him and turn him into our cat, but he is half-wild and doesn't want to be tamed, so it is going to take lots of little baby steps.

I noticed that my garden plants aren't even wilted today, so the deep watering yesterday paid off. They probably will need to be watered again on Friday or Saturday because we are supposed to stay pretty warm over the next few days. The nasturtiums are burning up in the heat, as they always do at this time of the year since they are cool-season plants in full sun, but everything else is doing well.

Before I came indoors upon arriving home, I sat on the patio furniture for a few minutes, sipping Gatorade, and watching the hummingbirds. They are all over the place, tons and tons of them. I think it is likely all the babies have left the nest, another sign that summer is sort of on the downhill slide now. The purple martins are here, but have left their martin houses to move into the cool shadiness of the woods. Before too much more time passes, they will begin to head south. It isn't like they announce they are leaving. It is just that one morning or evening you'll notice they aren't swooping around the skies eating insects and then you'll start asking yourself when was the last time you heard them or saw them. I think I heard them yesterday, but not this morning, so we'll see if I hear them or see them tomorrow.

Dawn

Deep watering. Explain how you do that, Dawn. If you have time, of course. And want to. lol.

I feel like I'm overwatering and then check the soil and it feels so dry. I think I'll never get the watering thing down.

Some JackWagon is doing full blown fireworks tonight. Sigh. And the dogs are fired up.

We didn't walk them tonight, although we walked. Kane had a hard time cooling off after our walk last night and we only walked half of our normal route.

Luckily, the chicks and chickens are doing well. I hate leaving them for several hours a day while at work. The momma hens are doing better about their over enthusiastic scratching which results in tipping over waterers.

Pretty sure I only started new bean seeds a couple of days ago and they've already sprouted. I pulled out all but one of our old bush bean plants. It--for some reason--looks healthier and has small beans on it.

I'm unhappy with our pepper and tomato harvests--although I DO have a harvest and am grateful for what we get--but overall, our garden looks pretty good. And, I think the peppers will pick up soon. The plants look healthy.

How is it already mid July?!

Jennifer, Use a soaker hose (or a sprinkler if you aren't worried about water on foliage causing diseases, which I worry about with tomato plants but not anything else) and water at a low, slow rate for a long time. The water needs time to soak in and go down deeply in the soil. You want to water long enough that, if you stick a trowel into the soil and dig a small hole, you'll find moist soil 4-6" below the soil surface. Since the tomato plants are largely gone from my fenced garden, I've been using a sprinkler and it takes 3-4 hours at the rate of water flow I am using for my soil to get soaked deeply. In this heat, the soil moisture won't last long, but the deeper watering is important because it encourages the plant roots to grow deeply into the soil looking for that moisture. If you water more shallowly more often, the soil never gets moist down deep and the plant roots don't either. In fact, you may find the moisture is only in the top inch or so of the soil, and this trains your plant roots to stay shallow, which means the plants are constantly thirsty and constantly demanding more watering. That is why shallow watering usually doesn't help the plants much.

In drought years I use drip irrigation lines, which are much more complicated to set up, but pay off as there is less evaporation of water than what you see with using a sprinkler. The problem with drip irrigation lines, especially in the back garden but sometimes in the front garden as well, is that voles chew through the lines to get to the moisture and then I have to repair or plug the chewed areas, depending on how much they chewed. I'm about to give up on using drip lines because of this.

When I see a person standing in their garden, water hose in hand, watering anything larger than very young seedlings, I am tempted to pull over, get out of the car and tell them that hand-watering in extreme heat barely wets the soil surface and, if they mulch, may only water the mulch and not even reach the soil, but I don't do it....because it is none of my business. I can see by their garden performance, though, that their watering technique isn't helping much as their plants always look tired and thirsty.

Our clay soil, even where it is very well amended in the raised beds, is very dry in general once the heat sets in, no matter how much rain has fallen in prior months, and once you let it get dry, it will not absorb water well, so I strive to keep the garden itself well-watered deeply. If I let that soil get too dry in mid- to late-summer, it is almost impossible to get it wet enough again. Right now, I feel like the garden soil is in great shape because I've been very conscientious about deep watering but if I were to miss a week of watering and no rain was falling, everything would go downhill quickly.

Out in the pastures and even in the yard where no one is watering? The ground has cracks ranging from 1/4" to 3/4" wide and they are worsening daily. The wildflowers pretty much have ceased blooming. The wild things are in our yard looking for food and water, not just at night, but in the daylight hours. I'm being greeted every morning by deer far too close to the house and to me, just looking for a handout or for water. As soon as I put out the cracked corn for the doves, the deer show up and eat it. It is very frustrating, especially for the doves, so I've been trying to 'hide' their corn by putting it on the ground under a different tree every day. The doves watch me put it out and go straight to it, and this may give them time to enjoy it and eat a good meal before the deer wander though the yard, find it, and gobble it up.

Since I don't water my compost pile, the tomato plants growing in it are starting to decline from being too dry and they have a lot of fruit on them now, so maybe I'll lay a hose on the ground in the compost pile and run it very low and see if I can get enough moisture to soak in to keep those tomato plants happy.

We continue to have random fireworks going off here and there. I wish people would get over it and stop already. We are too dry now and they are going to start more fires, and we already are having enough fires.

I wouldn't walk a dog in this heat either. I'd worry about the pavement being too hot and burning their paws. Ours hate going outdoors now and demand to come back in by barking incessantly. I let them out yesterday into their yard so they could be out there in it while I was walking down to the mailbox and back, which doesn't take that long...it is only about 300' from the house. By the time I reached the mailbox, they were barking and carrying on and wanting me to come let them back into the house. Their main form of entertainment now consists of sitting in the house, staring out the windows and barking at squirrels, and also howling at every fire truck or ambulance siren they hear.

At the big fire near our house yesterday, I was walking around with buckets of cold drinks, going from truck to truck and from firefighter to firefighter, as we often do, thinking that I was going to drop dead in the heat myself any moment now. It is so brutally hot out there. One of the firefighters looked at me and asked if I was remembering to hydrate myself (I was) so I must have been looking too hot and miserable. It is amazing how quickly heat drains a person. At a normal fire, we would have put up our shade canopy and stayed in the shade as much as we could and the firefighters would have come to us for drinks and snacks, but this fire was along the interstate and it is too dangerous to set up a permanent spot with all the traffic whizzing by at a high rate of speed, so we didn't have our shade canopy up. Luckily we were only out in the heat for an hour or two.

Sometimes, if you retreat indoors like I do in the hot weather and stay out of the heat as much as you can, then when you're forced to stay out in it, you really aren't acclimated to it. When Fran and I were loading our drinks and ice into our fire rehab truck, we were talking about how hot the fire station was....the kitchen was hot, the ice in the ice machine was melting almost as quickly as it was made, the drinks straight from the refrigerator were barely cool to the touch, the ice we put in the ice chests in the truck melted almost instantly, etc. When we got into the truck and were rolling down the road, it was hot and we thought the AC wasn't working, but it was....kinda, sort of and more or less. We need to get the guys to check it because we need for it to stay cool....when we have a firefighter showing signs of heat stress, we often have them get into our truck and sit there to cool off before their heat stress can progress to heat illness.

Oh, and yesterday's fire was the worst kind---wind-driven. When I walked out the door and could see and smell smoke from my back steps....smoke right there as if our place was on fire....that made me nervous because the fire was supposed to be 3 or 4 miles north of us. It wasn't. It was less than a mile south, but luckily , only smoke was at our place, not fire. I'm hoping for a quieter, cooler day today.

Since this heat spell is expected to persist through Sunday, we're all in for a few more hot days before we get a little cooling relief.

The dogs are barking and having a fit, which means deer are in the yard looking for food, and I haven't been out there to feed the birds yet. Guess I should get out there, check the soil moisture in the garden, and see if anything needs watering. I hope nothing does, but in this heat, it might. I'm going to have the younger granddaughter here for the next few days, and I'm glad....I'd rather play with her than go running off to fires.

Dawn

Prayers for us Dawn as we go through this. Saturday mother said I am ready to go no more fighting and trying and all that. I am tired and ready.

I said okay. She laid there about 20 minutes opened her eyes and said well how long does this take.

When we saw the lady to sign mom up for hospice I made my sister sign all the papers. . It's why she is firstborn.

I can't read all the posts right now but I did ssee MeaganMeagans about the slips. I wish you llived closer I have dozens and nowhere to plant them. Yet. I need to get some soil. Ready.

House build is slow as i spend most of my time with mom and working.

I roasted some of my small pot in bacon fat to have with my BLT tonight. Holy yum. Bacon is truly one of God’s greatest creations.

Tomatoes are taking their summer rest. Hopefully I can keep them alive until it cools off a bit.

luvncannin (I’m sorry- dont know your name) I laughed when I saw your remark about making your sister sign the papers. I too am firstborn of five siblings and they all say that too. I’m sorry it’s such a hard time. We’ve all either been there or will be and it’s tough. It’s good you can find a little humor at times.

Rebecca your zinnias are beautiful. I used to plant a couple of rows when I had a large garden.

I have many jalapeños- my sister tasted some candied jalapeños and loved them, but doesn’t know what was in them. I find several recipes, with celery seed and mustard seed and garlic or just vinegar and sugar. Anyone made this and have a recipe you like?

I’m looking forward to cooler temps next week and hopefully a little rain.

I am Kim.

One thing moms nd I have in common is sense of humor. She was a pill Saturday night.

Kim, I am glad to hear about your and your mom's sense of humor. Laughing is one thing that I tried to keep mom doing after she came to live with me. I wanted to keep her mind off my stepdad and daughter-in--law. Mom's mind was going anyway, and by the the time she died she did not remember anything about them. I promised mom that she would die surrounded by people that loved her, which she did. My stepdad died alone, locked up in his own home. My advice is, love her and help her laugh and smile as much as possible, you will have good memories for the rest of your life. Mom was always asking me something about my garden, and telling me that the place really looked good. Mom and dad bought this place in 1952, and she was right, this place has not looked this good since 1952. Mom was laid to rest next to dad and I contracted a company to make her a head stone just like dad's. They called a few days ago and said it was about ready, they had to go down and take more pictures of dad's stone (he died in 1957 ). The patterns like dads may not be available any more. I am anxious to see how close the could match the designs on the stones.

Farmgardener, congrats on your jalapenos. Mine are not producing so much this year...and that's really disappointing. I suspect they will pick up the production soon, though. I often chop and throw a jalapeno into whatever I'm cooking and they're just not as available this year. The plants look good, though, for the most part. Pretty sure a bunny is messing with them. But, would bunnies eat jalapenos?

My neighbors jalapenos look great...and they are going out of town for a couple of weeks. Ethan is watering their gardens and she said we could harvest from their veggies while they are gone. Oh, we will. LOL. I was a little too excited when she said that and she said..."but leave me some". haha.

I'm surprised at how quickly the bean seeds shot up. It took them all of three days. It will be nice to have fresh beans. I hope they aren't plagued by whatever disease got the last ones...even though those last ones did give us a nice harvest even with yucky looking foliage.

The new southern peas haven't came up yet though....hmmm.

Rebecca, your zinnias are pretty. I'm going to pull mine out. They have PM. These are different from the variety I grew in the past. They are very tall. That flower bed wasn't planned very well. I'm going to make bouquets with the remaining flowers and then pull them all out. (It has been nice having fresh bouquets on my dining table).

I'm not sure about your cucumber....

Dawn, I just can't figure out my watering issues. I do have soaker hoses on the back garden (tomatoes and jalapenos), but have only been leaving it on for around 2 hours. Maybe I should increase the time. BUT. BUT, the full size tomatoes that I'm harvesting are watered down and not very flavorful. Disappointing. We haven't had rain in three weeks this Sunday. I haven't watered the back garden in four days.

We really could use a nice soaking rain. Hoping rain finds us all (or those who want/need it) this Monday.

Armenian cucumbers. Why didn't I remember how vigorous they are? They are sneaking in to the other cucumber bed AND into the Seminole pumpkin area. This should be interesting--who will win? The Armenian cucumbers or the Seminole pumpkins?!

Chicks are still alive. They are such vulnerable little things. They all have tail feathers. Wouldn't it be a hoot if they all are pullets?! Watch them all be roosters. I'll be in a fix then because I won't keep them...and they'll become food for my friend and her family. My one neighbor needs a rooster (to not eat) so one can go to her.

The surprise chick has a weird looking wing. I researched it and am wondering if it's a split wing. I can't find much info on that other than NOT to use them for breeding purposes but it's mostly people who show chickens and such. I just want pets and eggs...and can't find info about any issues for just backyard pets/layers. Stormy won't let me look at it much. haha.

My issue is the bantams. If one is a male. My neighbor probably won't want a bantam rooster. I would want to keep it but don't want to upset Jean Luc Picard. He is such a good rooster. Nice to his hens. Yesterday afternoon, I saw through the kitchen window, a hawk circling...so went out to put the chickens up. Jean Luc already had the girls in the coop.

Anyway...a bantam rooster. What will I do with it...

Still don't know what breed they are. The only two bantam varieties that my chicks resemble are easter egger and welsummer.

Two more days of crazy heat and then a cool down. I sure hope they are right about this cool down. Looking forward to it.

Kim, In the early 2000s, my mom and dad set up all their power of attorney paperwork for finances, medical, etc. so we have that all covered. My brother, who is the oldest of the 4 of us, is the one given all the authority to make decisions for her, and I'm secondary in case something happens to him. It sounds like your mom still has her sense of humor.

Rebecca, I totally agree with you? I could live without just about any food on this earth, but I'd never voluntarily give up bacon.

Next week the temperatures should fall back into the fruit set range. Down here it will begin Monday and run for a few days with highs in the 80s and lows in the 60s. So, if anyone here wants to feed the tomato plants with a bloom booster to spur more flowering before the cool weather arrives, today or tomorrow would be a good time to do that, in order to push the plants into flowering in time for the cool weather. My tomato plants in pots still are flowering and we got fruitset this past weekend, so I don't even think I'll have to use a bloom booster. I just hope the heat doesn't make all the flowers drop this weekend before the cooler weather arrives.

Your cucumbers are edible but are infected with mosaic virus. It is interesting how much it is showing up on the fruit and less so on the foliage as often it shows up much more on the foliage. There is no control for mosaic virus once it shows up and it can spread from plant to plant via aphids, leafhoppers and other insects. Mosaic viruses can affect tons of different plants, including tomato plants, so most people will remove infected plants as soon as they realize what they have. There are some cucumbers bred (hybrid) or selected (open-pollinated) for tolerance of mosaic virus, but Telegraph is not one of them.

I love your zinnias too. They are such nice little pops of color in a garden.

Farmgardener, I've always made candied jalapenos using the BBB bread-and-butter pickle recipe, just substituting jalapenos for cucumbers. If you are pressed for time, you can use the Mrs. Wage's Bread and Butter Pickle Mix and I especially like using Mrs. Wage's Zesty Bread and Butter Pickle Mix for slightly spicier brine to make the candied jalapenos have a little extra zing.

I was hoping for rain next week, but the 7-Day QPF doesn't offer much hope for my location. It looks better today---we were in the 0.01-0.10" category yesterday and now they have us in the 0.10-0.25" category. While any rain will be appreciated, I don't think we'll get enough down here to give me a break from watering. Here's the current 7-Day QPF:

7-Day Qualitative Precipitation Forecast

Larry, I know that your mom must have been supremely happy and grateful to be so close to you in her final years. I am hoping that they can match your mom's headstone as closely as possible to your dad's.

Other than watering and harvesting a few tomatoes, I am not doing any gardening. The 4 year old granddaughter is here for a few days, so we are mostly spending time playing and swimming. It is so hot out there that we swim early and late, virtually the same hours as gardening hours at this time of the year.

We're going down to Fort Worth tomorrow to spend time with Mom, and to attend one of her great-grandkid's birthday parties. Any other time of the year, I'd view a visit to Fort Worth as a chance to stop at a couple of old favorite nurseries and buy plants, but in this heat? There's just no point. I do not want one more single thing to water.

Dawn

Dawn, are the cuc still safe to eat? I’ll pull the plants this weekend.

Down the slippery slope of learning again. Back in 1990, I asked, if I want to do art, shouldn't I know what art is?" Immersed myself the next seven years into trying to figure that out, along with painting. At the moment, it's butterflies. Where do I go? Back to the beginning. I figure I gotta know taxonomy! LOLOLOL, it's a riot. Then I have to do pronunciation guides for the Order, suborders, families, etc. Okay, so now, just 2 weeks later, I figure I gotta revamp my beds. Gotta get rid of many non-natives, gotta replace with natives. Thankfully, I DO have many natives, and many many native nectar plants. Ha! That wasn't on purpose, just lucky. I'll be back to this subject.

Kim. I have to tell you, that was THE SINGULAR BEST END-OF-LIFE STORY I have EVER heard. Garry and I laughed. And laughed. And laughed. All day. We absolutely loved it. . . . . I'm tired, I am ready to go. Closes eyes. Twenty minutes later opens eyes. "Well. . . how LONG does this TAKE?" I am still laughing, and can only guess many folks are thinking or saying the same thing when it's time. Furthermore, sounds JUST like ME!

I wasn't out for very long today at any one time, but was out frequently. I am so excited about all kinds of viny out-of control things. . . the cucumbers I just planted, the Seminoles--they already are showing their magical powers, tiny seedlings growing as if tomorrow were their last day on earth.

I have no idea now WHAT my melon fruits are! They were labeled Gaya, but she said they are not Gaya. Maybe Galia, she said. Well, all I know is that I picked the very first one WAY too early. Now what I'm seeing are the melons turning from dark green to golden. Any ideas, anyone? I've never grown melons before. These are getting to be pretty good-sized. I don't smell anything, though.

I'm thinking I need to follow advice overheard elsewhere, that I just need them to mostly just FALL off the vine. Good thinking?

I have a secret. Perhaps some of you have seen me declare what a wonderful mentor Dawn is. And I'm sure all of you agree. My favorite saying ever, is, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." I always want to surround myself with folks who are smarter than I am. How else can anyone learn?

Oh my. Having fallen down the butterfly tunnel. Remember when my son-in-law brought us toads to be re-homed because their home up in Owasso had way too many? Well. Come to find out, the person who had all the hundred(s?) of extra toads is a butterfly expert. Son-in-law happened, by chance, to mention this to me when he delivered the toads. I glommed onto that big-time, and now the butterfly expert is one of my new best friends. What a wonderful sweetie. He delivered several swallowtail cats a couple of days ago because he didn't have enough fennel, and GDW and he and I visited for 5 hours straight. Very funny. I tell you all, from my lips to God's ears. Thank you. God.

Oh so much more to come. But meanwhile, like many of you, I wasn't outside doing major weeding projects.

Rebecca, Yes, they are still safe to eat, just unsightly. I've never eaten one though, so if it tastes off in any way, I'd still discard it. The mosaic viruses are very species-specific and do not spread to humans.

Nancy, My garden is a mix of natives and non-natives, and I often stick with the older O-P non-natives because they are more appealing to the bees, butterflies and other pollinators. A lot of the later, newer hybrids don't seem to have appealing pollen or nectar and I've learned to avoid them. Many of the native flowers here are not prolonged bloomers, so you have to plant a wide range of plants so you'll always have something in bloom for them. I find annual type flowers, whether native or not, cover the hot months from late June through late August very well, as those are the months when the heat burns up a lot of our natives and the flower count in the pastures and along the roadsides drop tremendously.

We are very fortunate to have many native plants on our property, especially understory trees, shrubs, vines and ground covers that the butterflies, bees and hummingbirds like. This ensures we have a wide range of host plants for the various butterflies, which is good because when we originally landscaped our yard in 1999-2000, I wasn't thinking so much about the butterflies and bees back then. In more recent years, I have chosen plants more for them than for us and, when I re-do our landscaping next year, I'll continue with that, but we'll never have only natives.

Well, your Gaya would have been a snow leopard type with a pale ivory rind with some green spots, so if your melons are turning yellow, then it isn't Gaya. Some Galias turn golden as they mature, and so do at least some of the Santa Claus melons, true cantaloupes and muskemelons (almost always inaccurately called cantaloupes in the USA). Even Charentais melons turn a beautiful golden color as they reach full maturity. Many of the muskmelons I've grown have looked like a traditional grocery store cantaloupe as they neared maturity, but when allowed to stay on the vine until full slip, their rind's color took on a beautiful golden hue. The cantaloupes (true muskmelons) we see in stores are picked before they are fully ripe, as with pretty much all grocery store produce, so many people don't realize how golden their rind can become---not a deep true gold like CFW, but with plenty of golden tint to it. So, without seeing one of your melons, there are tons of possibilities and we're all just making a wild guess. Collective Farm Woman is a true cantaloupe and its rind turns from very dark green to deep gold as it matures. I think it was the first golden melon I ever grew and it surprised me how golden it became as it matured. There's even a handful of watermelon varieties whose rinds turn gold or golden yellow as they mature. These are great for folks who are new to growing watermelons because it is easy to tell when they mature since they take on a deep golden hue.

How wonderful that you have a new butterfly friend/mentor, especially one who lives in your immediate area and can tell you precisely what plants the butterflies prefer there.

The heat....the heat....the heat! I'm so over it. Really, it is the complicating factor of the higher dewpoints making it feel so miserable. I am longing for a good drought year (not kidding!) where our humidity and dewpoints are so low that our heat index temperature is lower than our actual air temperature. Doesn't that sound inviting right now? I'm not hoping for extreme drought, but on a hot summer day when it is 100 degrees and only feels like 93 degrees, being outdoors is much less miserable than a hot summer day when it is 100 degrees and feels like 110 or 112 or worse. As miserable as the soil and plants are in drought years, there are some good points about drought. In one of our worst drought years ever, the air got too dry though, and one day we had a dewpoint of -4. I don't remember what that did to the heat index, but I remember the air was so dry that my skin felt like it was cracking.

Our first cool day comes Monday, if the forecast doesn't change. I don't know if that is true statewide, but I do know I cannot wait for Monday....or Tuesday or Wednesday. Any and all of them will feel better than the weather we are having right now.

El Nino is fading slowly, so next summer we'll probably be either neutral or back in La Nina. Time will tell, but anything will be better than this hot mess of a summer that we're having now. The temperatures themselves haven't been that bad---we've hardly broken 100 degrees---but the heat index values have been so bad on so many days. For anyone who thinks this will last forever---it won't. (grin) Just a handful of counties west of us, their Keetch-Byram Drought Index numbers are about 100 points higher than ours and I believe they are on the verge of a flash drought. In fact, it may already be occurring. We could see the same in some other areas, including mine, if the next few weeks remain fairly dry overall.

Our grass is browning so rapidly now. At some point I will have to break down and actually water the lawn. I don't want to and won't want to, but it will become a fire risk if I allow the bermuda grass to completely brown out.

Yesterday I took our granddaughter out to the garden in the hottest part of the day---when it is so hot that snakes, if present, are hiding in the shade. We only stayed out for a few minutes, but she was so in love with the flowers, especially the cleomes, zinnias and verbena bonariensis and with all the butterflies fluttering around them. She's also crazy about the hummingbirds and will stand and stare out the windows as they visit the hummingbird feeders. In the garden, she got to see them visiting actual plants as they zipped around from one to another. Even when playing in the swimming pool, she and her sister both will stop and watch the hummingbirds visiting the nearby trumpet creeper vines.

Our youngest granddaughter does worry about the outdoor plants in containers because they need water so often in this heat. She asked me why couldn't we pick up all the flowers in the "big cups" and move them indoors to stay cool. I had to explain about how heavy those molasses feed tubs are, not to mention how lacking in sunlight the house is.....and, where in the world would we put 16 or 18 molasses feed tubs indoors and all the smaller containers as well? I told her that the container plants have to stay outdoors and that we just keep them happy by keeping them well-watered.

Yesterday my favorite two deer (they are waiting every morning for me to feed the mourning doves so they can slip into the yard and steal some cracked corn) brought their fawn with them. It was very tiny--Aurora describes it as a deer that is the perfect size for her---and still spotted and very shy, but I noticed it already is learning the fine art of taking away the cracked corn from the doves. A wild turkey joined them for breakfast and I was sort of surprised that the deer didn't try to chase it off. I guess they're all just trying to survive and not worried about being territorial. The mourning doves just sit patiently on the barbed wire fence and wait for the deer and wild turkeys (some days there's as many as 7 at one time) to eat and go away, and then it is their turn.

We're heading down to Fort Worth today and it will be along day down there, though it also will be good to see family.

Dawn

I have been reading along with the weekly posts, but not adding much. I wanted to hop on and send good thoughts to everyone going through rough patches with the health and well being of their families. My folks are both gone, but I certainly treasure the memories. I feel for those here that are struggling with it all, warm thoughts to you guys.

Garden wise, I have had a really nice year. All the cold weather stuff was plentiful, had all the snap peas and broccoli I could eat. Put up about 60 pounds of onions. Eating all of the okra, cucumber, tomatoes and peppers that I can, freezing/pickling/etc the rest. Harvested one block of corn, a second block is about a week out. My green beans are all hat and no cattle, just got too hot too fast for my stand of beans. Getting a few, but it is sad lol.

I have a real SVB problem here, so this year I planted a solid vine squash, tronboncino. I am pleased to say that it started very well, put on a lot of pretty tasty squash. Sadly, some strands are now falling prey to critters, but there is still quite a lot of productive vine. Maybe an option for any here that suffer from SVBs yearly, good flavor, grows like mad, doesn't ALL die when the borers come to destroy your garden. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tromboncino_(squash)

Any having a bad jalapeno year, I totally endorse planting a few Anaheims when you are planting your peppers. Grow fast, grow big, often start producing earlier than japs for me. Wonderful used fresh in dishes, just like japs. Also wonderful on top of a roast or what have you.

Happy gardening, all!

Rob

Hi all. They're Galia melons. Friend had labeled it Gaya, but when I asked her about it, she said Galia (and indeed now it has revealed itself to be that), and that they are delicious. Good to know, can hardly wait!

Dawn, of course you're correct--how could one get rid of all their non-natives. LOL Not gonna happen. Like tithonia for example--or v bonariensis or catmint! I agree on the O-P, and am regretting some of the new cute echinacea. But at least I have so much purpurea that it's all good.

That is so sweet about the granddaughters loving the flowers and butterflies and hummingbirds; they are so fortunate to be able to grow as children who love gardens, through you! Garry and I were visiting this evening about how we grew up hating gardening. Our parents didn't teach us to love it, it was just all work. Our parents didn't love gardening either, it was just work. We're hoping to teach the children at the "school" how to love gardening.

Yes, I am tired of the heat, too. I got into town by 8 this morning to help in the garden--we worked until 11:30, and were able to stay mostly in partial shade areas--but we were more than ready to quit when we did. No kids involved this time, and just as well. Too hot to be real fun. At any rate, by the time I got home, I was in NO mood to deal with more heat, so spent more time in than out for the rest of the day.

I probably mentioned that Amy brought long beans to Eileen and me. I am SO excited about them--both in my garden and at the school. The folks there should get a real hoot out of them.

Nancy, Galia is a good melon. One of its' parents is one of my favorite all-time melons Ha'ogen, sometimes also sold as Ogen or Ha-ogen. Galia types do seem a bit slow to mature compared to some other melons but are tasty and very fragrant. You can tell Galia type melons are maturing just by the lovely aroma wafting through the air as they ripen. There are different varieties of Galia melons, so your melon might have a variety name like Diplomat, Regalia or Passport (or any one of many others). You don't have to harvest them---let them harvest themselves. Because they are reticulated melons, they slip off the vine themselves (forming their own abscission layer and letting go of the vine when they are mature). While you can tug on them and remove them from the vine once they reach the half-slip stage, I just leave all reticulated melons on the vine until they reach full slip on their own.

I have friends here who grew up hating gardening because they spent their entire childhood working in the family garden (which, I pointed out to them, meant they had food to eat 65 or 75 or 80 years ago when we didn't have grocery stores within easy reach loaded with all kinds of food), particularly hoeing, and they swore they'd never, ever do that sort of work again once they grew up....and they haven't. Some of them have nice landscaping, but they don't grow anything edible. I think that is a shame because they've missed out on the joy of gardening and growing your own produce. I know I was lucky to grow up with relatives and neighbors who gardened and who loved it---because they taught me the joy of gardening along with the work. They didn't tell me gardening would bring a person joy or anything---they just lived it all by example, and I'm so glad they did.

It is too hot for gardening work. It is too hot for almost anything.

I hope you enjoy growing long beans....do you mean something like yard-long beans? I find them an interesting novelty type vegetable, but am not that crazy about the flavor so no longer grow them. I'm more of a traditional southern pea grower....just give me any variety of pink eye purple hull peas and that's all I need.

We had an interesting visit with my mom yesterday. Her mind was really wandering and she was telling us....um....interesting but untrue things. Aurora loved attending the birthday party at my sister's house, which included a huge water balloon fight meant for the kids, but some big kids (adult nieces, nephews and their spouses and friends) all got involved and pretty much everyone ended up soaking wet unless they were hiding indoors. It was a nice way to cool off on an afternoon when the high temperature there was a bit over 100 degrees. My sister's husband is a landscaper and their front yard, which is mostly shady, is just so beautiful and I could have sat out there in the yard and just admired the plants all afternoon, but then I would have missed out on all the birthday party fun.

Dawn

Hey all,

Geez, it's been a while since I've been on here and read all of everyone's stories and updates! Always encouraging to read what's going on in gardens this week across this heat cursed state of ours. It's been quite uncomfortable and sometimes its a struggle to stay upbeat and positive when laboring in the heat at work and getting home and its still too hot to sit out and enjoy. I love the mornings though, I just put a fan on my back patio and enjoy the breeze, for a while, anyway! Tomorrow our temps plunge into the 80's though. Can't say I'm disappointed!

I didn't read all of the comments for week 3, and here it is week 4 already, but want to send Dawn words of comfort during this hard season of an adult child's life, yes most of us have been there. It's tough to see a parent age, then we start to really realize our own age and how we "move up the line". I look at my adult children and it's hard to see them as anything but the kids that filled my home with energy and joy. But I'm seeing the lines in their faces and watch them with their own life adventures and know life really is a beautiful blessing, full of all sorts of good and bad, and we seem to manage to make it. So Dawn, my thoughts are with you right now.

Another post talked about a bloom booster and I'm curious if there is a specific brand that I can apply to encourage more rapid growth of my tomatoes. My yellow pear and sun golds are really producing well but what I'm wanting is my Earlys to produce more as I've been selling green tomatoes like CRAZY and I'm all out. So I read that phosphorous is the key to growth and suspect that a ready-made booster will be heavier on that. I have my soil tested every year or two, last test in spring of '18 tests showed that nothing was needed. I amend my soil with composted leaves and fert every two week with a liquid fish foliar spray. Now I'm wondering if there's more that I should be doing. Tomatoes are heavy feeders from what I've read so want to give them what they crave! I still feel like a newbie but I know there's always more to learn. I certainly don't want to be so enthusiastic and heavy handed with what I'm using now. So, any advice on what I can apply to encourage fruiting and happy plants will be most appreciated!

I'm looking at some other past purchases I've made and not used and see I have two things here. SEA-CROP, which states is an ocean mineral supplement, and then a bottle of ProBio Mother Culture Concentrate. There is an expiration date of 9-17. (it goes bad or at least loses its potency??) I also have a bottle of liquid kelp that I use for soaking garlic before planting. Any thoughts on these products?

Thanks all and enjoy what is predicted to be cooler temps!!

Hailey, I'm interested in the bloom boost and specific brand too. I looked at Walmart last night and didn't see any bloom boosters at all, although I've seen it before on shelves somewhere. Our closest Walmart in undergoing a major remodeling...and it's difficult to find stuff and they aren't staying fully stocked it seems. Anyway, I should look elsewhere.

I looked for Bloom Booster at our local Walmart also and did not find any yesterday. I think that I have bought it in Greenwood before, but cant remember where. I really think my tomatoes are too far gone to be helped anyway, but my peppers could use a little help. If I can find any when we go to town tomorrow I may spray my peas because they are just starting to produce, normally I dont use anything on peas.

I think I will go pick the okra and then call it a day. I have piled brush this morning, after picking the okra I will get cleaned up and take Madge and my grand daughter out to eat.

We worked from 6:30 yesterday morning till 12:45 driving t-posts. Ran out after 106 and I was happy to run out. I’m getting too old for that. Today is Sunday and thankful for a day of rest. Looking forward to those cooler temps and even a chance of rain.

My favorite bloom booster was Green Light. Used to purchase it at TLC and Lowe’s. Hard to find now but I have used the Miracle Gro bloom booster with satisfactory results. Spider mites are my worst problem right now. They have ruined the green beans and cucumbers and are working on a couple of cherry Toms.

My okra is doing great and picking twice to get nice mess of purple hull peas. Put up couple bottles of pepper sauce for next year and made candied jalapeños with my favorite refrigerator pickle recipe as Dawn suggested.

Dawn I had to laugh at your remark about kids and gardens. When our kids were young we had a huge truck garden plus had a goat dairy and sold milk. Our kids hated gardening and working in the yard - swore they would never be like me in that way. Now they both have gardens and flowerbeds and their kids are giving them arguments about same. Life has a way of coming full circle doesnt it??

Dawn, I am guessing Amy had the Chinese Long Beans, as she said these beans are a favorite in SE Asia, and when I asked her "how long," she held her hands out about 1-1 1/2 feet. I see the beans have all sprouted. 100% germination, Amy! I am so pleased you like the Galias, Dawn! I'm very excite to try them, and they're beginning to ripen quickly, now. If we like them, we'll have to grow more of them next year. I only had one this year with five melons on it. Would there be wiggle room to sort of "succession plant them? OSU says May 1-May 20. seed or plants. So I reckon there IS a bit of wiggle room. The Seminoles and cucumbers are growing like weeds. I HAVE to get the tomatoes in over the next couple days. I put in a patch of dill, too, as the caterpillars made quick work of the 3 I had. So this time I sowed the entire packet of dill out by the vegetables!

Today we were indoors most of the day. And I had a wonderful time--son in Minneapolis gave us a call to tell us they were livestreaming the championship baseball game and grandson was going to be pitching. We had so much fun; not many are livestreamed, so the kids let us know whenever one is. (They won, with the other team scoreless.)

Let's hope we're done with the worst of the heat. I'll be so thankful for a few days of more reasonable temps.

I can't imagine driving that many Tposts for more than 6 hours, farmgardener!

Nancy, the long beans were Long Bean Taiwan Black Seeded, originally from Baker Creek. I like them in Asian style stir fries. They are ...tougher or chewier...than regular green beans, and they are a cow pea, so they grow in heat when green beans don't. Those were saved seeds, I hope they didn't cross. Glad you got good germination.

Driving T posts in the heat sounds like hell on earth...literally.