Hot days in the garden

As I suspected, we went straight from a late, cold spring to the blistering heat of summer. Last weekend through Tuesday, we endured 90+°F temperatures as we worked frantically to get the garden planted before Wednesday’s rain.

The hens spent their day under the coop. We kept the waterer under the ramp so it would always be in the shade. We changed the water in the afternoon. I felt a little bad about the wastefulness of it. The water that had been sitting in the hose all day was hot enough to shower in; I ran and ran it until it cooled off.

Hens under the coop with the waterer under the ramp

The hummingbirds drank often at the feeder for cooling and calories. I got an action shot, finally.

Hummingbird in flight

The conifers are putting on a lot of growth this year. When the new growth sticks up straight, as on this white pine, Terry refers to the sprouts as “candles.” I don’t know if that’s an official name or not because Terry is fond of making up terms. Still, it is easy to know what he means. On the white pine, each little spike will become five soft needles.

New growth on the white pine

Speaking of soft needles, here’s one of my favorites. This is a dawn redwood. It is a deciduous conifer, like larches and tamaracks. The needles fall every autumn and grow back as soft as can be each spring. They never get as prickly as those nasty spruces.The dawn redwood was once thought to be extinct until small populations were discovered in China, where it is endangered from deforestation (a familiar theme). It has been planted all over the place since its rediscovery, and is a nice, fast-growing ornamental.

The lovely soft needles of the dawn redwood

“Grab a spruce, you’ll soon let loose.” Here is the new growth on a green version of a Colorado blue spruce. Terry says people like the green blue spruces better than the blue ones. Go figure. The new growth is a lighter green than growth from previous years. The needles will quickly toughen up. Spruces are not my favorites. I feel the same way about cacti and thistles. Unfriendly plants.

New growth on the blue spruce

Hilda’s sweet potatoes survived and are looking pretty good.

Sweet potato looking perky

Terry was itching to get the corn planted. The thing is that he doesn’t use a string, and the rows end up crooked as a dog’s hind leg. Then I have to try to get the drip lines on them and the landscape cloth around them. The first year he planted the rows two feet apart. I set up the drip line accordingly. The next year, he decided (without consulting me) to plant the rows three feet apart. Clearly, this was just to make my life a living hell, even though he claimed it was “because we have plenty of room.” I changed the drip lines. Last year, I tried to solve it by putting the drip lines down so he could follow them. And when I put down the landscape cloth, which is 3’ wide, I had to fold over one edge six inches to make room for the corn. So this year, I figured I’d put down the landscape cloth and the drip line first so Terry could plant the corn in between. I started folding over the landscape cloth as before, but after the first two rows, I decided that, screw it, I would put the landscape cloth down flat and move the drip lines one last time. I measured the distance between the lines at 3’6”. As God is my witness, I will never move these drip lines again!

I am never moving the corn drip lines again! I mean it this time!

We worked far too long in the heat. The only saving grace was that the humidity went down Tuesday afternoon so I wasn’t dripping sweat as I planted the last bean seeds. The rain came as predicted Wednesday, and afterwards the temperatures finally got back to the normal range of 70’s. This is the perfect weather for gardening, finally. I’ve been planting the raised beds and starting to pull weeds. That’s the way it is—as soon as you get the plants you want in the ground, you have to start pulling out the plants you don’t want.