We're still very, very busy in my garden as I always try to do too much. The pear and apple trees are loaded with fruit despite the fact they have shared fire blight. Mr. Man had to cut back some of the limbs that were breaking due to the heavy weight of the pears. He also cut back the limbs most affected by the fire blight. The grapefruit and Meyer lemon have lots of fruit for the first year. Yesterday we ate the three peaches that were on the peach tree. When we bit in they were so juicy that the juice shot out all over our faces, hands and shirts. Aahhh, to have to wait another year for more of these delicious peaches. Lost 5 citrus trees that were leafing out this spring. Just planted them in the fall. Had a late 32 degree night. Didn't cover them with a frost blanket as I had during the winter thinking it wasn't going to be cold enough to hurt them. Wrong. The kumquat is just beginning to set fruit and it looks like it is going to be a bumper year for this tree. If I can just keep my grands from picking them this year. I can always tell which grand picks this tree as to how high from the ground the fruit is gone. The pecan trees actually have pecans...the first time in 3-4 years. Again, thanks to the hurricanes. The Concord grape vines are absolutely loaded with grapes despite the fact that the County Extension agent says Concord grapes will not grow under any circumstances in our area. I'm not going to tell the grapes this as this is their 8th year and third transplant later. (Note to Self: Take a pic and pick some grapes to put on his desk as soon as they are ripe.) The tomato plants look downright pityful. Guess didn't get enough water when they needed it, bless their hearts. The hyacinth beans are getting large enough that Christian and the grands are going to help me make their teepee today with the vines. Tiny, tiny frogs are jumping all over the rocks around the pond. Still quite a few tadpoles in the pond. Cleaned out the kid's swimming pool for the second time this summer as the pump went out and had to find a new one that fit. There must have been a gazillion large tadpoles in the pool squiggling and wiggling all around Mr. Man's feet while he was cleaning it out. Thank God for this man...don't know that I could have done it. Missed the time to trim back my roses before their first big burst of bloom. Just trimmed them back. Hopefully, this won't harm them too much. Almost finished with my new daylily bed a friend has been helping me design and plant. This has been a major project as we killed all grass and weeds this spring, put down an irrigation system, put down four layers of newspaper, cut open 280 brown paper bags I purchased fromt the local grocery and put over the newspaper, and then put down 32 bails of pinestraw, in hopes of controlling the weeds and water conservation. We are now on 'phase 3'...putting in the walkway. This has been planned since before Katrina and is FINALLY coming to life. Friends all over have been giving me daylilies for this bed and all but about a dozen have been planted. The clome volunteers are now about 3-4 feet high in this bed and look so pretty. I just love this little plants...like the Everready battery, they just keep going and going. Have transplanted some herbs from the destroyed herb bed (thanks Katrina) to the new Fairy Garden that we made last fall around the little pond. Now need to mow down the herbs that I'm not going to transplant. Now, need to start concentrating on getting the other countless plants-in-pots in the ground.

I read "Botany of Desire" last summer and found some parts fascinating (apples), and others drawn out & a bit boring (hemp). I learned a lot from it, and though I wouldn't recommend it to a general reading audience, if you are interested in learning about food and like physical science it will probably appeal. I read "Shanghai Girls" this summer and I really enjoyed it. I knew little about Chinese history and culture in the timeframe featured in the book, 1937-'53ish. I learned a lot and found the characters' stories compelling. I began Julia Child's "My Life In France" right before I was hit with an avalanche of stayover guests. Still hoping to finish it before I see "Julie & Julia." The movie might leave the theatres before I do, as more folks are coming for Labor Day weekend. DH & I both read "The Tender Bar" in July, and we both loved it. That was one from last summer's list.. Despite all the rain we had, this didn't turn out to be much of a "reading summer" for us.

My Maine-to-Missouri trip completed (Third Hill North of Town), I've now moved on to Moscow in The Billion Dollar Spy, Quite a change of scenery ... and temperature.

I have finished the month of June with a book that was recommended to me on another site I follow and I only have one thing to say about it. Wow! The Q by Beth Brower is only available as an e-book or I can assure you that I would be purchasing it in hardcover. It's set in a slightly different Victorian England, no magic or anything like that for those who don't care for it. The main character, Quincy, has a year to satisfy 12 stipulations of her guardian's will in order to inherit the business she loves and runs. The problem is that the solicitor in charge of making sure she satisfies the conditions cannot tell her what any of them are. This does not really give a sense of the story but I finished it with that sense of loss the end of a good story brings. I did have a little trouble getting into it but it caught me by the second chapter.