July sullies on

The tall and diminutive day lily, last to bloom, emerging from behind some painters pallet.

Out in the garden early this morning, feet wet from the deluge of rain that came at dusk last night.  It brought 4/10ths of an inch to add to the inch that came on Tuesday night. Blessed rain. I feel so lucky when it lands at our house, it could be dry just a quarter mile away.

Baby hummers were trying to drink nectar from the red tips of new growth on a Japanese maple, they’ve got the color right, just not quite differentiating between leaves and flowers yet. Red-shouldered hawks continue to scree above the house, hunting and claiming turf, I’m sure there is some territorial and familial stuff going on between them these days, how long do the babies stay in the parents territory? Do they chase them away? How far do they go? I have no idea, but that young one has still been around our yard on a regular basis.

Only one bunny left, is it Flopsy or Mopsy? In the yard a week or so ago I came across the pom pom that was a rabbits tail, white on one side, brown on the other, nothing else, all that was left of that bunny was it’s little cotton tail….

A  view of one end of the garden, here the squash to the left, hanging in there- I haven’t spied any squash bugs or signs of borers but they seem a little anemic, this end of the garden suffers from poor soil and tree roots robbing the nutrients from the veggies I think. Sweet potato vines march towards the camera.

The beans and cukes on the trellis to the left are slowly dying from the ground up, some kind of funk -viral or soil born that’s causing the leaves to brown and fall off, but they still continue to produce. Fresh beans on the trellis to the right, just beginning to bear.  Carrots, beets and chard in between the beans need to be harvested.

The okra are finally getting their heads up above the purple hull peas in my experiment of a shared row, the peas are setting tons of pods and the okra are beginning to bear too. An infestation of aphids settled into the middle section but diligent application of soap spray seems to be slowing them down and keeping them from spreading.

July sullies on, hot and humid, at least we’ve had a spot of rain, but the prospect of 6 more weeks of days in the 90’s is a little bit depressing. Maybe we’ll get a reprieve as we did around July 4th, or perhaps a few days to escape once again to the cool of the mountains.