Stifling heat and parched soil

It's been pretty miserable for plants (and people) in the garden. The temperatures are close to 100° F ; it doesn't get below 70° degrees F at night and I don't even want to think about the humidity. Walking in the morning seems like a wet blanket envelopes the landscape, making it almost hard to breath. Morning and evening are tolerable, and the luminous light, because of the humidity, is some compensation. The vegetables, even the hardy sorts, are looking wan. The trombocino squash twining on the fence away from the thirsty woodchucks suffers from not being able to benefit from the abundant adventitious roots at each node. The large leaves predictably wilt each afternoon, recovering later on.

Milkweed bugs at different stages on the butterfly weed pods were a diversion. They're seed predators, pretty and easy to raise, so a popular classroom insect.

We're running the hose on even some really hardy plants. This evening, the oakleaf hydrangeas and Salvia guaranitica (Anise blue sage) were droopy and will benefit from evening refreshment. Unfortunately, there's no rain in the forecast.

Squirrels and salad?

In a optimistic mood, I sowed Treviso radicchio in the spring, thinking that I'd have nice small red leaves, in spite of the approaching summer heat. Unfortunately, Treviso radicchio turns red in cool weather, so I've had a lovely robust green patch all summer long; it's trouble-free but too bitter to eat without leaching out the bitter compounds before cooking, and then it's tough. I've left it in the garden as an experiment. I'm hoping that cool fall weather will mellow the taste, and encourage the leaves to actually look like radicchio. I had some lovely round heads a couple of seasons ago that were beautiful in the winter garden. So imagine my surprise when something started nibbling on a few leaves. We first thought maybe squirrels were using the flexible leaves in their summer nests, but I thought that the bitterness would deter them from too much activity. Yesterday evening, however, we had quite a surprise. The culprit (a cute female squirrel who's actually nursing according to a wildlife biologist friend of ours) was in full view of the kitchen window munching away. Who knew that squirrels like salad!

Summer bees and flowers

There are so many kinds of native bees, in addition to the introduced honeybee. They've been fun to learn about and observe in different flowers.



The big carpenter bees with their smooth black abdomens are the biggest, except for the occasional queen bumblebee. They visit a variety of different flowers, and are strong flyers. They're not above 'robbing' nectar from Salvias, either, poking holes at the base of the flowers, thereby circumventing entering the flower 'correctly'.

All of the smaller bees are fun to watch gathering pollen. These were visiting native Helianthus hirsutus and Rudbeckia fulgida flowers in the meadow.





There's a specialist bee that collects pollen from these portulaca flowers in one of my containers, but I wasn't able to catch it in a photo.