I used to have the seasonal allergies but grew out of them. It was bad in high school as my school was surrounded by fields of weedy things. When the twp did their mowing everything blew toward the school. I was a snotty itchy mess. Then one spring came and went without any allergies. Been safe ever since. I got in my car last week when the pollen was at it's peak and turned on the wipers. All that flew off was green dust and lots of it. The oaks are shedding their fringe, the maples their 'copters and the magnolia is dropping it's leaves as it usually does. It's messier than fall but I don't mind. I can have the windows open and hear the birds.

NMoasis said: Current weather: a lovely 76°
20 mph winds (gusting to 60 according to the latest weather alert).
10 UV index (very high).
9% humidity.

I live in a dermatological nightmare. 😅

After moving back to GA from NV it's taken my skin four years to look normal. It's not normal since you can't undo the UV damage but it doesn't look like I'm reptilian. When I go outside I use sunblock unless it's raining.

@ThunderChicken pillbugs and earthworms are pests in many places ( such as here) because they do their job too well, chuckl. Here they will both eat all the decaying matter and then they will go after the living roots and plants. We have to provide a very dry and arid surrounding to reduce them.

Starting to get a bit more colour in the garden.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

purpleinopp said: That sounds good to me. Whenever something comes up through my brick walkway, it's dollar weed or an ant hill.

The betony in my yard is Stachys floridana. I was terrified of it the 1st couple years when it decided to install itself in my "flower beds" but then I realized it's just an ephemeral spring thing & looks great before the main events even start to grow back.

I have no idea how similar it might be to lamb's ear.

The FL betony is shriveling up as 4'o'clocks start to get above what is still there. The "embrace it" is working, this would have been boring last month while the 4's were still dormant. The soil desperately needs that green material too.

23 days without rain here in NW Florida near the coast! I run my sprinklers for 45 minutes every other day and water by hand all my new fruit trees, flower beds, and garden!

Sounds like both of us last got rain on the same day. So frustrating!

@kittriana I think up here so much stuff grows that it just overwhelms the pillbugs and earthworms. I don't recall seeing any pillbugs in the garden beds (loads in the compost pile though), and earthworms are a good sign that there are enough organics in the garden soil. I don't consider them pests at all.

Now those darned gray squirrels...grrr....

Glorious sunny day at 70F. Put my four San Marzano tomato plants in the garden. They are indeterminate and tend to overwhelm and destroy tomato cages, so I made some strong steel trellises for them which should help with keeping them clean and orderly.

The compost I buried in one of the beds in early spring apparently had some seeds from one of my wife's preferred winter squashes, either a Kabocha or Honeynut (or maybe both). Loads of happy volunteer squashes popping up in that bed. I took six of them and potted them, and I took a bunch of the more scraggly ones and dumped them on top of my compost pile with some extra compost. I left a couple where they were as they were already near a trellis. I was planning on some winter squashes anyway, so now they are all started and ready to go. Still need to plant my pumpkin patch though for the fall.

Watered everything well, and mulched all the beds with a couple inches of leaf mold/compost. Hopefully that will help keep some moisture in the soil as it has been ridiculously dry here (15% relative humidity the other day, which is really dry for this area). We're forecast to get some rain and thunderstorms this weekend so hopefully the humidity will come up.

Just need to keep an eye on things and train the peas and squashes and tomatoes to climb the trellises. The pea tendrils are almost able to grab the bottom of their trellis.

I love it when the new plantings start 'reaching'. It's a thrill to see the hard work has paid off.

My grapes are all grabbing their arbors now as they grow. It IS exciting to see their little fingers wrapping around as they grow.

My beans are climbing up the weeds - I knew there was a reason not to pull those weeds.

Nothing planned for today. There's a lot of golf, tennis and football on TV.
Brought the trail cams in, to charge up the batteries. I have two on adapters, but one of them doesn't seem to be working very well. There's 24 rechargeable batteries, between the three cameras. I've only one charger which takes four and needs two hours to charge. So it's a 12 hour job, (not for me, for the charger)

Just had a check of the roses, no sign of black spot and three more are starting to bloom. We've eighteen between two patios.

Despite me clearing a lot yesterday, more fallen wisteria blossom on the patios.








The azalea hedge in the front garden is almost in full bloom and the acer tree is nearly "fully leafed." It's gone from its pink and pale green colour to a slightly darker green. It will go darker than this.
The blossom on one of our two rhodos is fading, the other is nowhere near coming out yet. The lawn needs a cut, but it won't get one today.




This brick gate post pillar, I moved two feet to the left 27 years ago when I bought our first Honda CRV.
When the house was built in 1965, the drives by modern standards, were quite narrow,
I was quite proud of my "newly acquired brickying skill." Then two weeks later the cable company dug up the pavement to lay their cable and splashed cement up it, some of which is still there.



This video from a week ago shows our six wisterias in our back garden at their best. Now the constantly falling blossom is a bit of a chore, but we wouldn't be without them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I managed to get 5 of the 23 ice plants planted before my knee said enough. I think I have too many for the fill in spaces - I have 4 that may go to the neighbor. And that means I shouldn't buy any more moonstone ones at the university clearance sale next weekend - but I may ignore that and buy them anyway...

I have 18 bags of mulch left to put down. I'm hoping to finish tomorrow.

Blue Lake bush beans to the front, hyacinth, lab lab purpurea to the rear.

Coral vine and wild grape reaching ( and yaupons)

Toedtoes said: I managed to get 5 of the 23 ice plants planted before my knee said enough. I think I have too many for the fill in spaces - I have 4 that may go to the neighbor. And that means I shouldn't buy any more moonstone ones at the university clearance sale next weekend - but I may ignore that and buy them anyway...

With me it's more like:

I got a bag of 15-bean/pea soup mix from the store and sorted out the ones I want to plant (red kidney, red, pink, black, lentil, great northern, small white, black-eyed peas, whole green peas). It seems you get about a seed satchet's worth of most of the bean and pea types with most of the product being lima and pinto beans and split peas which won't germinate and a little bit of barley. $1.50 and some time to sort them out for 8-9 bean/pea varieties for the garden is a pretty good deal if they germinate.

Was 80F here today and we're getting a good drenching thunderstorm right now.

ThunderChicken, the split peas obviously won't germinate, but why don't you think the limas and pintos won't? (or maybe I misunderstood)

I think that's quite a clever way to get a bunch of beans (and bean relatives) to grow!