The day before we left for our Muscle Shoals trip, nearly two weeks ago, we watered the vegetable garden as well as we could. It has been weeks since we've had any rain.
I watered the tomatoes, butternut squash, and cucumbers with the water hose. The hose would not reach the purple hull peas nor the squash on the far side of them. The Husband dumped multiple tractor bucket-loads of water on the squash.
A few of the peas were beginning to ripen, but not enough to fool with picking. The situation was the same in the community garden.
We were gone from Wednesday to Saturday. Monday, I checked the community garden and discovered that most of the peas had dried on the vines. The situation in our home garden is the same.
I picked the dried peas in the community garden and sent them to the food bank, then I pulled up the pea vines and planted new seeds. The dried peas can be shelled and stored and re-constituted like store-bought beans. Barring a freaky early frost, the newly planted peas should have time to produce a crop.
The squash in the home garden had a few fruits on the vines that weren't too big and tough.
The okra is making. I cut what was ready and gave both the okra and the squash to Nanny for her supper.
The tomato plants that have survived the drought so far seem to have appreciated the watering and are putting on new leaves, which the tomato worms are munching. I pulled off and smashed about 5 of the nasty buggers but didn't get around to all of the plants; I was in a hurry to get home and wash off the okra nettles.
As I sit here on the back porch, I hear thunder. The temperature just dropped, and the wind is blowing. My phone weather radar thinks there's a big cloud coming our way. I sure hope it's right.
This week, I have been watering my yard flowers with a watering can - not all of them, just the ones I really want to live - two hydrangeas that I planted last year, and a couple of lantanas planted this year. Everything else in this yard has learned to suck it up, swim or sink, and I'm not worried about those old, established things.
Speaking of lantana, I accidentally broke a limb off one of the plants as I was planting it. I poked a hole in the soil a few feet away and planted the broken limb in it. Kept it watered. IT'S GROWING!
(And IT'S RAINING HERE at this very moment. A good soaker!)
I cut the tall garden phlox (and anything hiding in it, like daylilies or sedum) down to the ground this week. The butterflies and hummingbirds had done with them, and they were an awful, crispy brown sight. I lit into them with the weed-eater-on-wheels and felled them like small trees. I'll rake that mess up one of these days and run it through the grinder.
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