“A” is for Air Conditioner

Dog days of summer…Whew! Hot enough for you?! she asked while enjoying a blowing fan from an Easy Chair…

As I may have mentioned, the summer blog posts are slow to be written and posted because, well, I would *like* to model my time by the feelings of the tune “Summertime….and the livin’ is easy….” However, despite the  kinda-sorta-drought in my area of PA, the garden *will* produce. So the tomatoes are coming on despite Early Blight, peppers are prodigious, eggplants are in flower as is the okra. There are bush beans and the pole beans are blossoming. We won’t talk about summer squash–OK, I admit to missing a day or two and harvesting Boats. The pigs next door will eat well on those monsters. And have I had blueberries (!!) and now onto blackberries which are such a tangle to wade through (Triple Crown primocanes are something else!)  I have a fearless Mockingbird that parks himself in the Curly Willow to scold me the entire time I am harvesting either of them. That bugger and his family ate almost all my currants this year (a first for that kind of theft!)

Without the rains, there are critters sneaking in under the tomatoes, chewing the succulent fruits for the moisture and hollowing them out. So, I picked a 3 pounder DESPITE the fact that it had been significantly chewed away- so 3.5lbs, say. I was able to pick cucumbers for 2 weeks and as of yesterday, 90% show signs of or have succumbed to the cucumber beetles which gave them wilt. Harlequin bugs are on the kale. Flea beetles on anything cruciferous. The winter squash show signs of borer damage.  I almost ate a blackberry with a stink bug after first chewing it. (Blearghhhh!) Yup, summer.

On my desktop, I have pictures from July which I intended to make into a blog post about Pinks and Purples and whatnot in the garden. Now the phlox are out (I sheared them earlier, so they are blooming in staggered progression), pink Floss Flower and the Rudbeckia (Black and Brown Eyed Susans).   So,heck, I’ll put these earlier photos here in this post and call it done and ready for August pix.