'From taking the kids sledding to grilling out on the deck in one week!" Thats normal for Chicago! Warm here too and two/three nights above freezing also. Im out staring at the containers waiting for SOMETHING to happen. A couple of the lily seeds look like they "plumped" up a bit. I didnt realize how much I REALLY live for this stuff until now. I have hopes of things coming back from last year, its a real mood lifter after watching the business reports. The daffodills are looking a little stronger, they had been so yellow it was pathetic to watch them. I think something like an Onion or a chive maybe is poking up a little also. Seems like the columbines are really trying to put up a leaf.

Paula and Barbara, In general, temperatures over 95 degrees can interfere with proper corn pollination (and some folks believe it happens at high temps as low as 90, but I've never tracked it that precisely), but just because it "can" doesn't mean that it "will". I've seen pollination impeded at temps lower than 95, but usually only in a very dry spring. If you have adequate soil moisture and high humidity plus high temps, normal pollination can occur despite the high temperatures. If you have a lack of moisture, generally referred to as "drought stress" plus high temps, pollination becomes more iffy. Usually, if I can water corn enough in a dry year to keep the leaves from wilting, I'll get some pollination. If I do not/cannot water in a dry year like that I'll get little pollination. High humidity affects the pollen but drought stress affects the elongation of the silks. That's why in dry years the corn ears can be more short and stubby than usual, if it even pollinates and you get ears. Corn pollen sheds for a brief period daily, between early morning and mid-morning and that's a good thing since our coolest overnight temps tend to hit right around sunrise. It also sheds for several days, so you have several chances at getting good tip fill on your ears. It isn't necessarily an all or none situation. Some years, I've had the bottom portion of the corn look just fine, but no kernels formed on the upper portion. Other times, I've had no kernels form at all and in still other years, I've had spotty ears with a normal kernel here and there and unpollinated ones elsewhere. I believe that occurs because you get some pollination on slightly cooler mornings and none on hotter mornings. Some folks here turn on a sprinkler every morning to water their corn shortly after sunrise in the hope that 'sprinkling' it for a little while will keep the pollen cool and help it do its thing. I have no idea if the sprinkling or misting helps, but likely it doesn't hurt. Our corn has been silking for 3 or 4 days now and we're just as hot as everyone else, but not as wet or as humid, so I've tried to water it every other morning early in the day. I don't have really high hopes for a corn crop. I guess in about 20-something days, I'll know for sure. Once your corn has pollinated, your ears should be ready to harvest in about 18-23 days. To test the corn kernels for maturity when it is about time for you to pick the corn, pull back a part of the husk and expose a few kernels. Use your fingernail to puncture a kernel. If a clear liquid comes out, the corn is not quite ready. If a milky liquid comes out, it is time to pick the corn. Getting a good corn crop in our climate cen be tricky some years. Ideally, you'd plant as early as possible---and for me, that would be the last week of March. With luck and proper variety selection, your corn would pollinate and ripen before the daytime high temperatures are regularly exceeding 90 degrees. In a really perfect world, your corn would ripen in 70-degree heat (not that such a thing would happen here). If you have raccoons around and you didn't know it, you're about to learn if they are there. They will 'know' your corn is going to be fully ripe and ready to pick on Thursday, so they'll show up on Tuesday and harvest it for you. It would be nice to have the harvest help if they weren't also eating it for you. Some years I wonder why I bother trying to grow corn. This is one of those years. Dawn

I have not been pushing any limits in the heat the last couple of days. In fact, it is sort of the opposite. I watered the plants well on Thursday and only did minor work for an hour or two yesterday and have stayed away from the garden ever since. As I am typing this, it is 99 here and the heat index is 112 so y'all had better believe I'm smart enough to not be out there in this heat. We did the whole CostCo-Sam's Club run down to the metroplex today and stocked up on everything, so we're good for a couple of weeks. It is terrible when Saturday morning feels too hot to even run errands and shop, but it did....and we went out and did everything we needed to do anyway. Now the game plan is to stay indoors, stay cool and hydrated, and enjoy having our oldest granddaughter here for what is left of this weekend. Jennifer, Armenian cukes love the heat and are very disease-tolerant. They actually are melons and not cucumbers, but if harvested while on the small side, they are very cucumber-like and even can be used to make pickles. The larger they get, the more melon-like they become, but not a sweet melon---sort of bland. I harvest them small for us and let them get as big as possible for the chickens. On hot days, I cut an Armenian Cucumber in half and put it on the ground and the chickens peck away at the flesh until there's nothing left. They love them, and it helps to hydrate the chickens as well as just entertaining them. As soon as something else finishes up in my garden, probably pole beans or squash, I'll plant Armenian cukes so I will have them for the chickens when the real (ha ha, that's a joke) summer heat arrives in July and August. I would have planted them in the back garden this year, if I'd planted the back garden. Megan, I'm sorry to hear that about your beans. If I hadn't planted mine ridiculously early (March), I would be in the same boat. I've pulled one variety because of the spider mites, but the other three are still chugging along. I am watching to see if the blooms form new beans tomorrow and Monday during the cooler weather they say is coming. (I can't see it or feel it here yet, but a lot of y'all who are north of us are cooler today, so I just hope the cold front comes this far south as predicted and doesn't stall somewhere north of us.) That's unfortunate about the gray leaf spot. I hate diseases. I am going to have very low tolerance for anything/everything this summer and won't hesitate to yank out the plants that start looking pitiful or stop producing. I am not foolish enough to think I can baby these plants through a long, extra-hot and likely extra-dry summer. It is just easier to plant fresh plants in late June or early July for fall production. This year does bear some unfortunate similarities to 1998. We lived in Texas then, but already had purchased this land and were up here clearing the woods and working on fencing in our 14.4 acres every weekend. Sometimes we didn't get much done in one weekend between the heat and the dense jungle that was our woodland. I thought we'd die in the heat before we got the fencing done. I remember it was a horrific grasshopper year, and Bruce and I both are seeing signs of that already too. Jen, As the plant gets older it will put out more tall stems. Its' nature is to have a low bushy growth of foliage at the ground level and to send up the tall blooming stems. Just deadhead each one back after it blooms and it will make more. One of the nicknames for verbena bonariensis is verbena-on-a-stick and now y'all see why. Butterflies absolutely adore the blooms. Jennifer, We have those gigantic flies here. They are horrifyingly huge. Back when Chris was in school and they had to do that insect collection in Biology, our place was incredibly popular because the kids could come here and collect enough different insects in one day to have enough for their collection. Until we moved here, I'd never seen those gigantic flies either. Bolted onions can be chopped and frozen. Paula, I have found lemon grass works as well as anything else to repel flies. I agree too, it is the little things that matter. Amy, It looks like you hit Smashed Thumb at an awesome time! Have y'all noticed that on the FB gardening pages this week, there's tons and tons of tomato problems? It is mind-boggling, and I simply cannot believe how many photos we're seeing with herbicide damage, though we also are seeing plenty with plain old physiological leaf roll. I should get off this computer and go sweep and mop my floors. I just don't want to. Heat makes me lazy. Dawn

Another thing you can do is let the new sprout(s) grow and after a few years learn how to graft and graft a favorite variety(s) on. Since you're local to me, I can tell you that there are California Rare Fruit Grower meetings each month where you can learn to graft or even find someone to do it for you. If you don't have room in your yard for two avocado trees, you could dig this one up and put it back into a 5 gallon container. If you do that keep it in a fairly shady cool spot until it's growing well, and keep the sun from hitting the container and baking the roots(wrap something white or reflective around the container). I have a Fuerte avocado that I planted a month ago. I kept it in it's container for a year so it was a lot stronger and healthier looking than the one I see in your first picture. I planted it in a spot where a tree would shade it from the strong afternoon sun, and when I heard about the first heat wave coming I put shade cloth over it. I also wrapped the trunk with an extra layer of shade cloth (I should have also painted it white but haven't done this yet). And I've been diligent about watering it, almost every day when the weather is real hot. And since I've read that Avocado trees like humidity, I try to spray or mist the leaves every day when it's hot. The other thing I'm going to do it put 4 inches of mulch around it's base (but not touching the trunk) to keep the it's roots as cool as possible. Avocado trees have shallow roots and the mulch can help keep them happy and healthy. So far my avocado is looking pretty good. I don't like to water it every day, but with this heat I've decided to take the risk of root rot...and if the heat lets up I start skipping days to let the soil dry out a bit.