HBO, Seeds and Softball...

Yesterday was the first day in a long while that started out overcast and fairly cool. Okay, fairly cool isn't quite accurate. It was still in the 80s, though there was a stiff breeze that tricked you into thinking it was fairly cool...because the sweat dried faster.

I've had to put off lots of outside chores--and yeah, inside ones too--due to the very real possibility of nuking myself with heat stroke, dehydration or brain boil. So I spent the better part of the day mowing and weeding and edging and pruning. I even hauled the ladder out and refilled the hornet trap with the attractant stuff--not one of my favorite things to do. By the afternoon the clouds were gone and even the breeze wasn't helping, so I gave up, went inside and had an icy cold beer.

I had planned to write, either the blog or the serial, but I discovered something as I plopped down on the couch like a rag doll. When I get too hot, my mind doesn't work. Well, it works, I can still function and make decisions and all that, but the creative part of me just shuts off. Most folks get energized in the Summer then slow down and sort of hibernate in the Winter. I do the opposite. I'm worthless for the better part of June through early September and have to struggle to do stuff until Fall, when suddenly I come out of the coma, all raring to go with energy to burn.

So, instead of doing any writing, I stayed on the couch like a melting lump, watching the first season of The Newsroom, which is the best thing I've seen on television in...I don't know when. Jeff Daniels is totally, compellingly brilliant. I'm really glad I decided to watch the replay because now I'm caught up and the new season on HBO starts Sunday, July 14.

 

This morning, another cloudy start to the day, I took the boys down the mountain for a really nice walk at the VA, then came home and finished up the yard work--though when is gardening ever really finished?

I've been waiting several days for the seed pods on the Snaps to dry before I pruned the stalks for the second blooming.  These plants are just my favorites.  I started with just five wee plantlets and two years later I'm working toward a Snapdragon forest...

After the pruning...













 

 

I had so many stalks just bursting with seed pods, though many hadn't turned brown yet so I tossed everything into the lawn mover box my new machine came in--I knew there was a reason I kept it.

 

 

Then I went back to clean up my mess and couldn't believe what was strewn all over the path...about a million little black seeds, which means I must have a billion if you count all the stalks in the box!  I gathered up a dustpan full, then sprinkled them all over the slope; the rest I swept into the soil around the existing plants.

One of my favorite pots this year...the Lobelia is a beautiful shade of bright blue and is growing like a weed. I thought the Nasturtiums would be overbearing, but no, the Lobelia is almost crowding them out...

 

Whilst scattering the seeds along the slope, I turned to see how my three veggies were coming along, and wow...my first Zucchini of the Summer! It's only about 5" long, but still, there it is...

 

I also have a few tomatoes, so far only about the size of marbles, and a tiny little squash has just begun to grow from the first flower.  I'm hoping it will be a good plant as it's one I haven't tried before.  It's round and about the size of a softball when it's fully grown and supposedly tastes like an acorn squash.  I'll be curious to see how it works out, though if it doesn't, lobbing it down the ridge should be pretty easy.  I used to love a good baseball game...