What else? Oh, yeah, The little pieces of herbs I planted the other day are doing well, thanks, no doubt, to the rain. I even cut off a small stem of the lavender I bought and stuck it in there, just to see what would happen. So far, it looks good. hasn’t wilted at all. I planted some common thyme seeds in there today; I hope it grows.

Here’s a pic of the “BBQ container”:

Herbs planted in a BBQ cover
Also wanted to show you how much the volunteer tomatoes have grown since the first pic I posted. Rain does some amazing things. No matter how much you water…
If you remember when I divided the mums and gazania, you’ll notice that they are looking great so far. Guess I didn’t kill them (yet!).

My, how you’ve grown.

I planted a pot of Unwin’s dwarf dahlias a while ago; planted a few seeds in each spot, not knowing how well they would germinate. I think they all came up, so I had to move 5 baby dahlias to individual pots (for now) as the container’s only big enough for three. I may use them, may try to sell them on craigslist. We’ll see.

Went out after dinner and between rain showers and got the bird netting on the beans enough, I think, to keep the birds off. Still need to do some adjusting and fine-tuning, but, for tonight, at least, I think they are okay. Would’ve finished, but it started raining again, and got dark…

I bet you know what comes next. The garden dept at Lowe’s. Yup. Almost as bad as a book store. I needed stuff to make Al’s container mix, and a little batch of gritty mix for the herbs. When all was said and done, I spent about $80.00, cuz I needed seed-starting mix, vermiculite, perlite, orchid bark mix and on and on. Then of course there was the new hose nozzle – old one died – and, oh yea, the creeping lemon thyme, Provence lavender, marjoram, and rosemary I just had to have. And the garden magazine. And the seeds. Only 3 packs, I swear…SIGH…

To make things even worse, I had to lug all that potting soil, etc, to the truck cuz the helper lady was helping a lady even older than me. So I’m trying to manhandle that cart thing in the vague direction of my truck, and I wandered off without the bag with the dog chain in it. The whole reason (so I told myself) I went in the first place. Naturally I didn’t remember until I was pulling in the driveway, so I had to turn right around and go back after it. Was still there, no problem, but…

Oh well. Once I got home, I made a small batch of gritty mix and planted the herbs. I put the marjoram, lemon thyme, and creeping thyme I already had in one of the ceramic pots Hubby got me on clearance last fall, but I also took a little piece off each to try another experiment. Hubby bought one of those cheap little charcoal grills for something or other, but I think he only used it once. The top (pretty red) was just taking up space in the laundry room, so I took off the handles and grill supports, lined it with a piece of coco fiber mat to keep the soil marginally cooler, and filled that with gritty mix, too. I put the little pieces from the other herbs in it, and will plant the common thyme seeds I bought today, maybe tomorrow. We’ll see how that goes.

Once I got done with all that, it was getting dark, and I was starving. Forgot to eat lunch today, and breakfast was a long time ago. Called it quits for today, and made a left-over roasted chicken sandwich.

I know it ’s way late, but one little corner of my raised bed is close enough to the house that it gets some shade even in summer. I had a foot or so of space once I pulled out the borage, so I decided to take a chance and plant some lettuce and spinach. Between the house and the swiss chard next to it, the spot may get enough shade to let them grow, at least for a while. Some of it’s already sprouting – so far, so good. Also planted some carrots. May not do well, but all it cost to try was a few seeds.

Just a couple flowers:

Blue Larkspur

Blue Bachelor Button

Tired and gotta get up early to ride to McAllen and have breakfast with Hubby’s nephew and his wife. That’s all she wrote, for now…

Pics within:

Speaking of hot, can you believe this temperature? It comes straight off my local TV station’s Desktop weather thingy, so I ain’t lying…

Finally seeing pepper blossoms. This one is Lilac Bell.

My lone surviving Sesame plant is blossoming. Isn’t it pretty? I thought it would look nice against the purple basil in the background.

A garden overview

The container with Blackie, lavender, and lantana is looking good.

Lastly, my inside-under-lights lettuce, since it’s too hot outside. It’s growing better since I added a jury-rigged drip waterer, made of a water bottle with a hole poked in it, and fish tank valves and tubing. Working so far. The bigger plants were planted a while ago, the smaller ones shortly before I went to CoSpr, and last night I just planted some more seeds.

I had a bunch of things I wanted to do outside today, but with this heat, not happening. Not quite ready to die of heatstroke just yet…
I need to lift up most of the landscape fabric and put plastic underneath the seams, then tack it down better. Didn’t have time before I went to CoSpr to do it right. After that’s all fixed, I need to get some edging to go around the garden area, to hold in the mulch that should be there.
Hubby brought me a big blue pvc barrel, to which I want to hook a makeshift drip irrigation system for the raised bed, after which I can finally mulch that, too.
And we need to do some cleanup and rearranging in the yard, so that we can move Hubby’s picnic table to a better place, closer to the grill and out of the middle of the yard…LOL! Sigh…how long till winter?

Oh yeah, forgot to mention. While I was out trimming the runaway cucumber vine, I found 2 ripe cukes that had grown down behind the back wall of the garden. My first official harvest! As hubby said, nothing like $500 cucumbers…

EDIT: Hot or not, I went out and bathed the garden with Murphy’s Oil Soap, baking soda, and a wee little bit of my puppy’s flea shampoo. Hopefully washed off and/or killed all those nasty buggies I hadn’t noticed before. Garden looks happier, though it could just be from getting a nice cool shower after a REALLY hot day. Always makes me happier, anyway…

Here are some pics I took about a week ago that show how much the garden had grown while I was in Colorado. Compare them to these pics.

Pics within

Heatwave tomatoes living up their name, setting lots of fruit even in this heat

Hubby’s picnic table, WIP

Hubby’s picnic table, another angle

As I said, these pics are about a week old. In a couple days, after it stops raining, I’ll take some more, just to see how they grew after the rain. You can water all you want, but even a little bit of rain does so much more…

So I finished my two Monster Pots, as I mentioned. Here’s a pic of the jasmine pot:

The other Monster Pot is for my rosemary. Here’s a pic of the finished pot and the rosemary for which I made it:

Here’s a pic of the baby peppers and basils sitting in their eventual garden homes, getting used to the sun. It took about an hour and a half, again, before they started looking wilty and I moved them back.

I went to HD to buy some electrical conduit pipe and some more ugly orange buckets to make more SWCs, plus some more of the stuff I need to make the potting mix I wanted to use. Well, guess what? HD, the only place where I could find anything even remotely similar to what I needed, has decided not to carry the stuff any more. So now what do I do? I just hope I can find something somewhere that will work.

On top of that, hubby broke the coffeepot, so I had to go buy a new one before I went into caffeine withdrawal! Yea, very bad thing to have a dead coffeepot.

As if all that wasn’t bad enough, our AC broke YET AGAIN, and it got up to 97 degrees in most of the house. My poor little window AC in the bedroom just could not cope, so it got close to 90 in there. Can you say YUCK? Left a message with the manager’s office, and I sincerely hope they send the guy to fix it pronto. Be nice if they just replaced it with a new, more energy-efficient AC unit instead of patching the old one all the time. Yea, right, like that’s gonna happen.

I had intended to make my SWC’s today, on my kitchen table…yea, I know, but it’s too hot outside to be messing with stuff like that. Hard to be building stuff when the sweat’s running down your face and dripping in your eyes, or running down your glasses making sweat trails you can’t see through. Hate it when that happens. Didn’t do it, though, as the same thing would have happened in the kitchen.

So all in all, almost wasted garden weekend. I did finish my two Monster Pots, and transplanted the night-blooming jasmine and some filler stuff into the styrofoam beer cooler pot.. We’ll see how it holds up. Was too generally pissy to think about taking pics. Will have to remember to do that tomorrow, maybe.

The 36 baby basils are growing nicely. Spent a few minutes trying to sort the “flavors” today. Found at least one lemon basil, and a couple cinnamon, I think. Kinda hard to tell when you’re sniffing 36 basils…lol. I started moving the babies I want in the garden to spend an hour or so, in their peat post, in the garden spots I have for them. Figured it’s best to get them used to the full sun and heat they’ll have to grow in, unless I want them to fry soon as I plant them. They lasted about an hour and a half before they started looking a bit wilty. It’s a start.

I should probably start doing that with the baby peppers, too. They’re not as close to ready to plant as the basil, but might as well get started anyway. I’m impatient. Besides, I need to get that stuff in the garden, get the irrigation thing done, and mulch. Hopefully all before I leave on the 14th for Colorado. Uh, huh…doubt that!

Sigh. Like I said, not a great weekend. Hope yours was better…

Here’s a couple pics of the baby basils and peppers…

This is 2/3 of the baby basils, and a couple of creeping sedum. When I went to Lowe’s the other day, they had the almost-dead plants on clearance for $2. I picked up a 4″ pot of the creeping sedum that looked like it just needed some TLC, and repotted it into two pots. I think it’ll make it. Hope so; it’s cute! I also got a gal. pot with 3 penta for the same price. One of them was obviously dead, but the other two looked like they could make it. I threw the dead one in the compost pile, and potted the other two into separate pots. I trimmed the foliage back by like half; though it pained me greatly, I cut off every single flower bud, too. I want them to make roots and start growing before they bloom. It was for their own good, much as it hurt.



Here are the rest of the basil and the peppers.

And here are the bush beans just sprouting. The green mini-milk crates are rabbit and bird protection until they get too big for it; I’ll make one of Mel’s cages in the next few days. Pardon the toes…

Oh, yea, the night-blooming jasmine…it started to bloom last night, and again tonight. I wish there was some way to transmit that heavenly aroma across cyber-space so you could smell it, too. The fragrance is every bit as heavenly as I’d heard.

Gotta go; got some flower seeds I soaked overnight to get planted, then I’m going to bed…

This is the leaves and some blooms. The black stuff that looks like tar is part of the bloom. It’s a really cool-looking flower, and I’d really like to learn more about it.



This is a close-up of the bloom, which is my current desktop wallpaper.

Now on to the “Etc…” I hauled the transplanted basils and chamomile babies outside into the shade today, but I had to move them to the other side of the stairs. The sun is high enough now that it peeks into the back of the holding bed about 5pm or so. The chamomile seemed okay, but the basil didn’t seem to like it much at all. Fortunately, the other side of the stairs still has some shade. Once I moved them, the basil perked right back up again.

Built a small planting box, about 2′ long x 1′ wide, under my hose faucet today. I have some lemon balm babies, too, and that seems like the perfect place for them. They won’t get too invasive, because aside from some damp from the faucet, the rest of the area is full HOT sun and concrete clay. That ought to hold them in check!

Made about 20 gal of Al’s 5-1-1 mix today, to fill the lettuce window box and the lemon balm box.

Oh, and Annie’s Granny said she planted some nasturtium seeds outside in the ground at the same time she sowed some indoors. Like me, she hasn’t had much luck with the indoors seeds. I soaked a few overnight, and sowed them right in the container with the moonflower and other plants. We’ll see if they sprout any better.

That’s it for tonight, as I had to actually do some housecleaning today, and I still have alot of baby basils to transplant. Not to mention the rest of my ever-expanding Garden To-Do List…

Working out there in this heat is killing me; at least most of the heavy work is done. Still have odds & ends to do, and growing babies to tend, but no more heavy lifting, thank God. It got up to 90-something today, and it’s still 80 degrees out there, at this hour. Okay, done whining.

Got a bunch of lettuce sprouted and growing. I’m going to try to grow them inside, in a window-box type planter under lights, to see what happens. It’s way to hot for lettuce outside, but tomatoes and cukes get pretty boring without lettuce after while. Need to go find out how day length relates to lettuce bolting, so I give them the best chance. I figure I can cover them at night, so they think it’s dark out. If it doesn’t work, all I’ve lost are some seeds and some time. No big. They need to get a bit bigger (and I need to mix up some soil mix) before they can go in the window box, though.

My to-do list is still a mile long, so I’m quitting for tonight to get some sleep.