Very warm here - we had that heat in mid June but with it a lot of rain. Now it's standard plain old hot and we have missed the showers that have happened, less than an inch this month and it all came in little .2" dribbles. I have been watering some anyway - I'll turn on the sprinkler again this morning and I'm going to head out and do a round of deadheading and cutbacks - my plan is to be out by 8 and done by 10. We have family coming down for a bbq and relaxing on the deck while we can and then inside when we need to escape to AC. The garden is rather glorious with phlox and the dahlias are really starting to bloom. My annuals - especially the zinnias and sunflowers are pretty spectacular. :)

Not sure what's going on with the forum pages but everything is black. I have to click and drag the cursor to see words. And every click brings up a Venture Capital One advertisement. Anyway, I love SOUTH SEAS. It has put on a fairly decent show for me this year. Great, considering I just got it last year. I am wondering if one of my NOID's is SPIDER MAN. I will have to check out the specs on it. Really love FORSYTH INDIAN SUMMER is a real beauty! Well, I just used my whole break because of all the pop-ups, so will check back later. Vickie

What a great bunch of blooms today. I love the photo of Dancing With Deric and Gudrid, but Major General is my favorite daylily. It is such a wonderful color. Great looking seedlings too.

Ilene, Since you're thinking it would be OK if the onions bolted, they'll probably be stubborn and refuse to bolt! (That's the kind of luck I always have, anyway.) I like your rainfall collection tank. I've wanted something like that ever since we visited the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin where they have a massive rainfwater collection/cistern system that is incorporated into all their buildings and is simply amazing. We have 5 ponds, 3 of which we put in here after we built the house, but they haven't had water in them in months. They do catch a lot of rainfall when it actually does rain, but I leave the water in 4 of them for the wild things and the fifth one is "mine" to use to water the veggie garden if needed. That fifth pond is on the northeast corner of my veggie garden and I can pump water out with a small sump pump or can scoop it out with a watering can. This pond is fairly small and holds maybe a thosand gallons so the water doesn't last as long as you'd think. If I had it to do over again, I would have had Elvis (our backhoe guy--you gotta love the name) dig a quarter-acre pond and I would have had him dig it deeper. It is going to be 75 or so here today, so I suspect we'll have fires again like we have the last two days, although maybe we'll get lucky and have calm winds and no fires. I'm not ready for the cold to return. All the fruit tree buds are swelling--even the Mexican plum which tends to be a bit later than the others. I guess the cold will be a good thing because it will slow them down, but I'd still rather be warm. The plum tree that's been in full bloom for days now probably won't set any fruit, or will set it and lose it to the cold, but I'm hoping the other trees will make up for that one. I looked back at my temperature records and noticed that when Feb. is warm, we always have a cold spell around the first week in March, so this cold front that's coming in is right on schedule. Carol, that is a very smart cat. In the afternoon our cats "collect" on the back porch where the greenhouse plastic and the afternoon sun keep the temp about 10-20 degrees higher than it is out in the open. I guess sitting or sleeping in 70-90 degrees on a winter afternoon is pretty appealing to the cats. That porch almost feels "too hot" to me at times. Sometimes I open the french doors that connect that back porch to the breakfast room and let some of the porch's collected hot air flow into the house. Dawn