LysmachiaMoon's blog: The Heat is On

Last few days have touched into the 90sF with overnite temps in the 70sF. Not pleasant. So far, nothing seems to be suffering because of that very heavy drenching we got last week. I did water the gro-bags of eggplants and peppers last evening and my pots of basil (no heads) and young asparagus. The asparagus is from seed starts this spring and doing pretty well; I'm going to get it into the ground in a few weeks, once the weather moderates and I get the patch cleared up where I want them to go. I'm hoping we get a rip-snorter of a thunderstorm and some rain today so I don't have to really commit to watering the veg.

This has been a very busy week, so I did not get much gardening done. I did get another stretch of the South Border cleaned up, mostly just deadheading the lamb's ear and yanking out a few weeds. Cut back the big patch of pure white iris. Just getting those dead lamb's ear stalks out made a huge difference. The silvery leaves look so nice and fresh, but those finished flower stalks just look like nothing but dirty old wet tissues to me. I've also been selectively cutting back the daylilies and iris in the below the deck garden. The couple of daylily patches I did last week are already putting up fresh new growth. It's always a surprise how much nicer it looks once the bare browning stalks of the finished daylilies are removed. This time of year, my rule is remove anything brown or yellow; it really freshens up the whole border.

So, the busy week. R has a 33 year old Buick Station Wagon that he adores for some reason. The thing has no sentimental memories attached. We bought it used, we never took it on vacation, we never actually did anything with it. In fact, it has been so rarely driven over the years that our mechanic moans everytime he has to do the annual inspection...last year he just made sure the brakes worked and slapped a sticker on it. It had accumulated only 40 miles in one year. Anyhow. I hate the car and wish it were gone. I thought my prayers were answered when it wouldn't start despite having a battery that tested fully charged. It has had "electrical issues" all its benighted life. R fiddled and tried everything but nothing worked, so finally he decided to get it towed over to our mechanic's place to see if Jerry could figure it out. Long story short, it turned out to be a bad battery...it would hold a full charge, test 100%, then a few hours later...Pffft. Getting the car towed out was the real adventure. I had to push (Me, myself, because R has arthritis) the damn thing out of the garage so the tow truck could get at it. This was not hard to do because the floor slopes outward, but I still felt pretty put upon. Good thing I'm strong like bull.
The car was finally gone, then we noticed the house felt very warm. The house A.C. was out....it was running but blowing warm air. Great. Hottest week of the summer. I had to listen to R whine about how warm he was all evening. I am used to sleeping without ac (I hate having it blow on me, so I just sleep with my windows open), so I slept like a baby. Next morning I got the tech over and fortunately it was an easy fix and we're back up and running (bad capacitor). In between all this, I had to run up to a friend's house to feed/water her 5 dogs because they are away on vac. Then vet visit for the two foster "kittens" from last year...their 1 year rabies shots. I made 1 appt for them both like I did last year. Only thing I forgot was they aren't kittens anymore. I had to put them in one big crate and the combined weight was 20 pounds. It was like hauling around a mountain lion. In between all this was visit to orthodontist ( who still keeps thinking up new torture devices to put in my mouth) and hair cut (where the girl got my bangs too short...I look like the Little Dutch Boy).
Today I'm packing up some bread, cheese and a bottle of wine and going to sit by a stream with a friend and just chill out. As much as possible with a forecast high of 93F.

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