It was supposed to pour yesterday but once again it didn’t rain at all. (It last rained on Saturday night, nearly a week ago, and since then the wind – which is especially vicious to the front garden – has been searing most days, which stresses the plants, makes them lose water faster, AND makes the soil itself lose water faster on top of the plants sucking more water out of it than normal. I noted that by this afternoon, the dirt path that winds behind the front garden bed had begun to crack due to loss of moisture.) Today I finally gave the full garden a deep watering – no select watering with a watering can. It always feels like a small defeat when I have to water the full front garden, which has been painstakingly plotted to be as xeric as possible, with the highest-water-preferring plants placed as close to the main crop patch (which by its nature needs more water than the rest) as possible, so that I can just hand-water them all together. But going out to check on the front garden about five hours after watering, it was amazing the marked improvement in the health and vigor of the plants, though I’m sure that lessening humidity, sporadically sunny skies (rather than constant sun), and a wind shifting to be more and more from the south (which affects many fewer of the front garden’s plants than a breeze with some west, north, or east in it does) aren’t hurting either.
Yet more bean plants are up, and there are ever more beans forming on the plants that are already flowering. Much to my surprise, some of the peas are still flowering despite temperatures in the upper 80s at the present hour, though I imagine at this high a temperature the flowers will just drop off without pod-set. I’m noting that ‘Golden Sweet’ pod formation is different when temperatures get this high, and it’s something I’ll need to keep in mind. The peas start to form in the pods when they are significantly smaller than their size at lower temperatures, from 1/4 to 1/3 smaller, and the peas also seem to form much more rapidly on this cultivar at this temperature. A handful of the pea plants appear to be just a hair’s breadth from fully dead now (shrivelled leaves, with the stems still green), while others seem to be dying and still others appear to still be in fine health. All the fava/broad bean plants still seem to be doing fine. The tomatoes are growing much more vigorously, but still haven’t flowered. (It’s not just me; at the farmers’ market this week, the only tomatoes were ones grown in a greenhouse, and when I walk by other gardens that have flowering tomato plants, the unripe fruit seem nearly the same size from day to day.) The cucumber looks like it’s going to drop its first little cucumber (which has begun to yellow despite not being full sized), but I noted that another one is now growing on the other vine.
The first cardinal climber to bloom is now flowering prolifically. The nasturtiums are growing rapidly from seedlings to true plants. The love-in-a-mist (Nigella) has finally been blooming this week, but so far this year all I’ve seen are white flowers! (As usual, in early spring I seeded in a mix of cultivars that consisted of white blooms, rose blooms, and varied shades of blue blooms.) The gladiolas are continuing to grow vigorously, appearing to absolutely adore their aged horse manure and wood chip mulch.
The bird bath was so popular on this dry-earth, damp-air, sun-drenched morning that by the time I watered the front garden and walked back to turn off the faucet, it had already been used, and by the time I went back outside to check on it less than two hours later, it was dirty and half-empty. The Robins that so often come to the back garden appear to be guiding their second batch of fledglings, one of whom appeared to be sitting on fallen branches holding down the little pile of leaves at the edge of the back garden earlier this afternoon. I’ve also been hearing the Cardinals and Chickadees a lot today (and possibly the Downy Woodpeckers too, as from inside their call sounds quite similar to Cardinals), and while I was watering saw a brief appearance from a Cardinal that looked to also be from one of this year’s broods.
I saw a really nifty looking probably-wasp first in the back garden and then in the front, appearing to be diligently searching for … something – but I couldn’t tell what that was. The most distinctive thing about it was a pair of bright yellow-ish antennae that stood out especially markedly against its seemingly black body. I came in and plugged in the basic info to Google and the most common wasps that fit that seem to be in Europe and Australia, but I came up with a candidate that could be the right one, one of the species of Spider Wasp (Entypus unifasciatus). If it really is that wasp, it would explain what it was so carefully looking for – a large spider to make up its next meal. My old garden had several quite large spiders, but in my current garden, the biggest one I’ve seen is about an inch across, and that’s including the leg width. Perhaps that is why it appeared to be giving up the search right as I was coming back inside.
Still working on that photo post; sorry it’s taking so long.
P.S. Edited to add: I forgot to mention that the squirrels appear to have eaten – or at least absconded with – most of the rain lilies I potted in that handmade Mexican pot. I have no idea why it didn’t occur to me that they might root around in the pot despite the bushiness of the sweet violets appearing to cover the entire pot (I’d been counting on the visual appearance of the planting to deter them). Ah well, live and learn.
