We’ve been breaking one heat record after another in Texas this summer starting way back in May. It seemed like we skipped spring altogether!
On a lighter note, how hot is it?
I saw:
1. One of my chickens laying a fried egg
2. A bird use a pot holder to pull a worm out of the ground
3. The pollinators wrote a note on the bird bath, “ice please”
It’s so hot that we can’t even imagine garden chores unless we set the alarm for 1:00 am, turn on the porch party lights, and work till sunrise. Therefore, the following suggestions are July garden survival chores.
1. Mow on your highest setting.
2. Early morning is the best time to water all your beds and pots. Keep your heat-loving perennials like hibiscus well watered, avoiding spraying the leaves.
3. Do NOT fertilize this month, not even with compost! High nitrogen contents can burn your plants in the summer heat.
4. Pull weeds by hand.
4. Plant one more round of zinnia seeds to bloom through the fall.
5. After your vegetables die out, solarize your soil by removing all vegetation, cover the soil completely with clear plastic, and allow the sun’s rays to eradicate any unhealthy fungi remaining in the dirt. Leave the plastic on for atleast 5 weeks before you start your fall vegetable garden.
Keep your chin up. This summer is an anomally (I hope)!
Come up with your own weather joke! How hot is it?
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?