This is still well upstream to us, but it’s getting closer. They released some water from Falcon Lake into the flood-ways, which has made its way here. On top of that, we had “Tropical Depression 2,” which didn’t get strong enough for a name, but is still dumping rain on us. The mosquitoes are as big as B-52s, and really vicious, and there is water all over the place. Not to mention the disgusting humidity…

Alex shredded the zucchini, broke the cantaloupe vines, and gave the Gold Bar Melon a terminal case of powdery mildew. I saved 3 cantaloupe; the rest either fell off and splattered, or split because of all the water. Got lots of Gold Bar Melons, though I still haven’t tasted them. Been eating the cantaloupe…

My arbor blew over, as I expected, and pulled some plants out by the roots. I have one surviving cucumber, which seems to have been resurrected by either the rain or the compost I put on it. The tomatoes all have blight, I think. And tomato fruit-worms…I’ve had to throw away at least 2 dozen tomatoes with icky worms eating the insides out. I’ll let what fruit remains ripen, then pull them out. I’ve got some more volunteer babies coming up in the compost I put on the containers, so I’ll transplant them and see what happens.

The jalapenos and Fruit Basket bells are doing great; The pole beans I planted a bit ago seem okay so far, too. For now!

So, not a complete loss, but annoying still! Gotta tell ya, though, it is no fun trying to garden wearing long sleeved shirts to protect against mosquitoes in this heat (in between rain storms). I’ve been using the Off clip-on thingy, but it’s pretty ineffective against the hordes of evil beasties out there now. I need to spray for aphids and icky diseases, too, but it just keeps raining. Maybe by Monday or so the rain will be gone…I hope.

So, that’s the state of the garden for now. More later…

Seriously, I have no idea what to do with all my containers and the arbor thingy. If I leave them there, they will probably end up in the next county, or maybe in the neighbor’s living room, but I really have no secure place to put them. No room in the house at all. I guess I’ll stick the ones that fit under the picnic table, as that thing is so heavy it may be okay. The rest, I guess I’ll put behind the lattice. Not gonna be of much use, but at least I’ll know I tried. Don’t really want my containers flying through somebody’s window at all.

I just hope ole Alex politely fizzles out and goes away. Hurricanes are no fun when you have to go to your BIL’s house and sit in the dark with no AC and nothing to do until it goes away. This time, I’m bringing beer (even if it will get warm!) and my bottle of rum. If I have to be miserable, I’d prefer oblivious!

If you’ve got an in with MN, would you mind asking her nicely to be gentle?

Thank goodness for those pics, though, and for garden magazines. They help motivate when thinking about planting seeds and nurturing the babies seems like an exercise in futility. Sooner or later (most likely MUCH later), it will stop being well over 100 degrees every d&*m day, and we will get some rain. Then when other people are shoveling snow, I’ll be picking tomatoes and eating garden suppers.

Gardeners have to be either eternal optimists or masochists. Haven’t decided which yet.

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…

Thoroughly enjoyed my trip. Colorado Springs is an amazingly beautiful place, and there is so much to see in the area. We went up Pike’s Peak, visited the Garden of the Gods, saw the Air Force Academy, and went to Seven Falls. Saw lots of other stuff, too. Spent a lot of time with my wonderful, adorable grandsons, which was the best part of the whole deal, apart from watching Jen graduate.

I took more than 200 pictures, which I will be posting in a gallery eventually. I took one of them and made the wallpaper below:

Click the thumbnail to see full-size and download.

Now, back to the garden. Got lots of baby tomatoes, the cukes are starting to fruit, and some of the peppers have blossoms. The plants are starting to grow up my arbor, as planned. The bush beans in the garden are being eaten by something, even with the cage, and they don’t look so good. It’s not snails, slugs, or any caterpillar I can find, and it just the leaves that are being eaten…completely, I might add. Not in bites or chunks, but the whole leaves(not the stems) just vanish…very strange.

The cantaloupe, watermelon, and zucchini are growing and blossoming, too. All in all, it’s going quite well. No time to relax, though, as it’s almost time to start the seeds for the fall garden…

Hubby got bored while I was gone and decided to build a really cool picnic table. It’s done but for the sanding and staining; I’ll post a pic when I remember to take one before it gets too dark.

Gotta go, got stuff to do…
Later…

On the garden front, still got lots of seedlings with no place to call home, as we have to go get my compost, or they charge $3/mile for delivery. Haven’t had the chance to get out there yet, as it’s way far away. Bummer.

And I still haven’t gotten most of my seeds; the old ones just aren’t growing. Surprise, surprise, right?

Not gonna be much of a garden, at this rate.

On another note, my poor daughter in Colorado Springs is getting blizzarded on, and I’m sweltering in 88 degree temperatures. Tell ya one thing, if it wasn’t for AC, there’s no way in H$ll I’d EVER live in TX.! I’d rather have the blizzard any day.

Had all my baby tomatoes and others outside, but took them in again, just in case we do get some bad storms.

We may actually get some rain, Heaven permitting. It appears winter’s last gasp is headed here. Supposed to drop temperatures quite a bit, to which I can only sound a resounding “Hallelujah!” The weatherman isn’t sure if we’ll get a nice gentle rain, which would be wonderful, or severe thunderstorms. Not so good, but, hey, at this point I’ll take whatever we can get.

This was my first plan:

That was a bit ambitious. I decided to go a bit smaller:

DH still seemed to think that was too much, so I downsized even more:

I also plan to use containers and Self-Watering Containers. I’m gonna have my flowers, herbs, and fragrance somehow.

Dad always had some sort of garden, even though we moved alot. His favorites were lilies; they always smelled so good. Mom liked plants, too, but she was too busy doing the usual housewife thing to garden much.

It was inevitable, I suppose, or maybe just genetic. When I had a family and a place of my own, I gardened, too. We moved even more than I had as a kid, and I left many gardens behind. Then I got older and achier, and gave it up for a while.

My Dad just recently passed, and we had to start cleaning out his house to sell it. The mountain of garden catalogs, his beautiful garden, and nostalgia, I guess, inspired me to try again.

DH and I have landed in extreme South Texas, and it appears we’ll be here for a while. Gardening down here is a whole ‘nuther animal. We’re blessed (or cursed, depending on perspective) with a long growing season. You can have a spring garden, which you start in December or January, depending on crop, then the garden just sits for the summer months. In August and September, you start the fall garden.

Besides the heat and humidity, you have to contend with an infinite number of bugs, diseases, and other assorted pests. The “soil” is really concrete, masquerading as mucky clay. Hard as a rock when it’s dry, which it usually is, and sticky and slippery when it’s wet. Oy! I’m about to talk myself right out of my garden.

So in January, I came home from Dad’s determined to have a garden. After thinking about it for a while, I decided Square Foot Gardening was the way to go. I’m too old to be digging this concrete and trying to make it into something resembling friable soil, so raised beds and Mel’s Mix it is. If you don’t know what Square Foot Gardening is, click the link. It works; I’ve done it before.

Once I decided how I was going to garden, it was off to the races.