Saturday morning muggies

It rained all day yesterday and well into the night.  This morning everything is wet and green and the air is warm and humid.  The only way I can survive working in the garden is to get out there really early, which I did this morning.  Perspiration was pouring down my face and oozing from every pore by 8AM.

Today I concentrated mostly on the perennial beds along the driveway and on the north side of the house.  A purple flowering plant has lived in the back yard grass for years, but this year it has taken over everything...and as far as I can tell it is not a native species.  I pulled a full garden cart load of the stuff out of the north side garden.  The driveway perennial bed had some, but that bed has had more on going attention and there was less of it.  It is amazing how much the invasive plant has grown in one week.

Part of the problem, I think, is that the lawn has not been fertilized at all this year.  I have given plenty of reminders to my resident lawn care person, but somehow it has just not been done.  A good application or two of organic fertilizer in the early spring usually helps to keep weeds at bay.  Larry does use a mulching blade when mowing, and that helps to feed the lawn. This year, though, we do not have a lawn; we have a very large weed patch, and the weeds are crowding out the grass.

The aphids are mostly gone from the eggplant plants.  Ongoing vigilance will be required.  I regret planting tomatoes in the grow camp.  The plants are healthy, but very tall, and I've had to remove the screening on that section to accommodate them.  Furthermore, the tomato plants may be tall and healthy looking, but they have very few flowers, and I can only see three tomatoes forming on one plant, and none on the other.  The tomato plant in the raised bed is doing much better.  It has several tiny tomatoes forming and has many flowers.  The "volunteer" tomatoes that I put in large planters earlier this week are growing steadily and starting to form flowers.