The weather people say the temperature should be 13 degrees lower than yesterday. However, they posted a 98F for this area so an 85 is still too hot to do much outside. I have already collected tomatoes and a handful of purple cayenne peppers, two of which had gone from the purple to the red stage. I found a seed pod on the hibiscus a few days ago and picked it today. It was brown and just beginning to open. It is drying now in a small bowl. I have three trays of spearmint and four of grapefruit mint drying now. Still have to water things but by then I will be ready to call the outside gardening quits for the day. I want to check out my lavender, bay tree, and rosemary bushes for watering. Those are all inside now.
I found a tomato hornworm just a bit ago--the first one in a couple of years. I had just finished spraying a couple of plants for powdery mildew and checked over a pepper plant to find that big, bad boy. My usual procedure is cut the pests in half and let them decompose in the garden. But I took a second look and saw a whole bunch of little white grains on it and something clicked in my mind. I checked up on line and sure enough. My pest had met his pest, a braconid wasp, and would soon be hatching out more wasps. I left him alone to continue his function as wasp incubator
This story has dominated the news here as school has started. Neither Mom nor I can remember any time when we were growing up that we had cancelled or shortened school days because of heat--and very few because of snow. And most of the schools we attended didn't have air conditioning either. Now we can't imagine life without.
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