Good morning to you all on this sunny Friday. The temps are supposed to rise to the mid 80s. Have a few pictures from the gardens to show. It was cool enough that I got quite a bit done yesterday. With the storm and the heat over the last weekend and a few days on either side I let the jungle get a bit out of control. So I spent a lot of time pruning the tomatoes and tying up the vine plants. Also fertilizing everything and trimming some of the plants damaged by the potato beetles. Thankfully not much of the last.

This first picture shows the first blossoms on my dragons egg cucumber. I have to start trimming the tops of my vines--they are all topping the trellises. Trimming off the growing tips will force them to put out more lower branches. I may have to do the same on the tomatoes--several of them are already a bit over 4 feet--which translates to 6 feet over the cement surface.

This is the Teddy Bear sunflower almost ready to open up. They are only a shade under 3 feet tall. The package says the max height is only 4 feet. So far they seem to be doing well although the five plants are in one medium sized pot. I thinned them out about two weeks ago and cut out four weaker plants. I have to be really careful with the watering because they can dry out the pot very fast. Note for next year--fewer plants in this size pot.

These little purple flowers were a complete surprise. They are on the Vietnamese Multicolor pepper. But all the other flowers on this plant and the one in another container are white. I have to keep these plants in as much sun otherwise the full color of the foliage doesn't develop.

Here is my ginger mint--blooming nicely all along its stem. Not for long though. I have it scheduled for a drastic cut back today. I just love this very pretty plant but there is no way it will every be put in my large beds. It grows very fast and is very invasive. I would never get it out again. The same goes for the spearmint. I am debating how to carry these over winter. I may try cuttings late in the season to put inside.

And last--the flowers are the first on my acorn squash which is another vine I have to start topping to keep it to the height of my trellises. The little orange dot in the middle of the frame is the first ripe tomato--on the yellow cherry. There is another just a bit above which is almost ready. Those are the earliest so far.

Good morning to you all on this sunny Wednesday. The temperatures reached a bit over 90 yesterday so all I did before we closed up was get some of the more needy plants watered. I saw the first blossom on the melon vines this morning and all of the vine plants need tying. Right now all the gardening involves maintenance and waiting. When we drove by the site where our favorite farmers' market but it hasn't appeared yet. I hope it does soon.

Here is an article for the 'Same story, different time and place' file. Remember all of the stories about the air quality (or lack of clean air) in Beijing at the time of their Olympics. Well the same kind of stories are appearing concerning London. And then the Tucson to Phoenix area had a dust storm that was eerily reminiscent of the Dust Bowl era. The morning news had a brief line about it with some rather dramatic film. The first story I found this morning on this was from the Guardian in the UK. MSNBC has a whole 19 seconds of film and comment from NBC's Nightly News broadcast.

The European sovereign debt crisis carousel continues to spin out of control. They barely got the temporary fix arranged for (extorted from??) Greece when the ratings agencies downgraded Portuguese debt further into the junk realm. Ireland, Spain and Italy have more question marks on their fiscal situation. I have been wondering for some time how long they can keep the merry-go-round going.