I love where I live…Southern Indiana has great people and beautiful landscapes.  I don’t want to bad-mouth Southern Indiana, but right now, I wish I was living a little north of the Arctic Circle!

We are in the middle of a heat wave…highs in the high 90’s with ridiculous humidity. The few minutes I’m outside when I take the Spoiled Mutt out to go potty, I stand in the shade, waiting for him to “do his thing” and drip sweat. The humidity honestly makes it hard to breathe. This is the time of year that I wish we had a swimming pool – or at least, good friends with a swimming pool.

As if the heat and humidity aren’t enough, we have these teeny-tiny mosquitoes – so small they are difficult to see – which find me irresistible. And their bites really, really itch for two weeks or more. I spray myself with insect repellant, then quickly sweat it off and those skeeters find a patch of skin they can attack.

Garden Update

Needless to say, I’ve been doing as little as possible out in the garden –when I do work in the garden, it’s out of duty, not for enjoyment. Fortunately, the plants, for the most part, are thriving. Right now, there are Oriental lilies, daylilies, hydrangeas, and coneflowers blooming. I need to stake some of the Oriental lilies, they are heavy with so many blooms. I need to deadhead the daylilies and coneflowers and there’s always little weeds to pull out.

But nothing’s getting done. Maybe this weekend, I’ll get up very early and work while it’s still relatively cool.

My little raised-bed kitchen garden had a set-back: a deer walked through the middle of it, leaving good-sized hoof prints, and ate the tops off of the tomato plants and the zinnias –ALL of them! Interestingly, the deer didn’t bother the marigolds, basil, oregano, dill, tarragon or sage. I’d read that deer would avoid plants with a strong scent, so maybe that hungry deer had read the same article.

I’m hopeful the tomatoes and zinnias will recover. I’ll have to come up with something to keep the deer from eating them again.

I’d planted some collard green seeds in the kitchen garden about three weeks ago…I’m pretty certain that was a waste of time…nothing’s sprouted so far. I was really looking forward to cooking up some good collard greens with corn bread.

Maybe better next year

Another less than success story: the blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) planted in the front walk garden didn’t bloom this year and is looking sort of puny. This plant’s not really a grass, but part of the Iris family. It is supposed to have tiny blue flowers in late spring / early summer (see photo taken last year). It had been doing really well.  Maybe the other plants have grown enough to shade it more than it likes and are giving it too much competition.  That’s my theory, at least.  I’ll transplant it to a less shady, more open spot and hope for better next year.

Isn’t that what gardeners always do… hope for better next year?

Stay Green, Good Friends!