More strange weather, but it's not altogether unwelcome this time. The heat and dryness continued for a week after my last post, and we were officially in moderate drought conditions, but then it was like a switch got thrown and everything changed, literally overnight. A cold front rolled in and broke the drought with almost daily rain (I got over 4 inches in just one night a few days ago),...

No rain yet. I've only had an inch in the past 5 weeks. The forecasted heat wave didn't fully materialize, though, so that's good. It has been getting into the mid and upper 90's, but no 100's so far. The grass is starting to go brown, but at least I've hardly had to mow it lately. A decent trade-off in my book. - Sunday, July 19 - Just after sunrise. . Cool and pleasant. ....

No rain at all this past week, but the humidity dropped a bit and it was pretty nice overall. The week ahead, however, is supposed to be the hottest yet — upper 90's, with a chance of one or two 100+ days, and heat indexes of 110. I'm not looking forward to that in the slightest, and the national weather says that much of the country east and south of me will be in the same boat. A big heat...

It finally rained. I got a little over an inch a few days ago, but it wasn't much help. All it really did was green the grass up a bit, and increase the humidity. June is usually one of the wetter months, if not the wettest, but not this year. I hope it rains a good amount in July. If it doesn't, I'll be gardening in drought conditions. It's been hot, too.  Heat indexes over 100 lately. It's...

It hasn't rained in almost 3 weeks, not since the remnants of Cristobal blew over. After a crazy amount of spring rain, it's just hot and dry now. Figures, right? - Wednesday - The germination under boards experiment. It worked well. I think I'll start doing it regularly. I'll need to pick up some more boards, though.  Pretty good results for a hot, summer planting....

It seemed pointless to post a week 9 blog just 3 days after week 8.5, and I was too busy last weekend to post a week 10 (these things take quite a while to make), so I'm just going to call this one week 11. It's a couple of days early, but hey, that's close enough (and close enough is the widely accepted standard with horseshoes, hand grenades, and garden blogs, I believe).  It's been a...

This is several days late because week 8 turned out to be the wettest yet. I think the ground stayed completely saturated for at least 4 days straight. It killed the tomatoes and the eggplants, and finally got to the peas (not so indestructible after all). One trellis of peas is definitely stunted and yellowing, but the other fared much better, somehow. Unfortunately, the onions and potatoes...

Sure enough, the year I decide to try a garden blog ends up having one of the wettest springs on record. It was finally supposed to be dry and clear this past week, but of course, it wasn't. Monday and Tuesday were cloudy all day, and cool (again), but at least it didn't rain, and by Wednesday evening the garden was dry and I was able to get the rest of my rows planted. I took some pictures...

It's been cloudy and rainy for the better part of the past 2 weeks. Today it stopped around noon, gave me a few hours for picture taking, and then started back up again (with a little thunder and lightening) while I was inside sorting the images for this post. Temps are pretty much back to normal, though, so at least there's that. Thursday was cloudy, but mostly rain free, and that evening I...

This week's blog post almost didn't happen. Mother Nature just doesn't want to cooperate. It was rainy and unseasonably cool all week. As such, there's been very little growth, and this week's garden looks about the same as last week's. Fortunately, it was dry the past 2 days, and I was finally able to mow and get a little work done in the garden (raking up bucketfuls of rocks washed out by...

It was cloudy the first half of the week. It even rained another inch on Tuesday, but the sun was shining on both Thursday and Friday, and things have mostly dried out. ***** Muck no more. I was able to bring the soil back to good condition today. Peas and cucumber. I don't know if this little guy's gonna make it. All the rain last week might have nearly drowned him, so soon...

Ah, spring. Cold turns to warmth, brown turns to green, and flowers begin to bloom as the sun climbs higher in the sky with each passing day. The earth practically begs to be worked, and so, without hesitation, you work it.  A warm breeze, the sun on your face, the faint but crisp smell of earth being turned. Few things are better. You've been looking forward to it all winter. There's...