September 2019, Week 3
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
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September 2018, Week 3
Comments (35)Nancy, It is just a sad fact of life that heat + lack of moisture give our hot peppers better flavor, and cooler temperatures and excessive moisture do just the opposite. There's not a lot we can do about it. I am careful to choose peppers that are higher on the Scoville Heat Unit scale for just this reason. While this sometimes means that hot peppers harvested in July and August in hot, dry years can be almost unbearably hot, it also means that those harvested in cooler, wetter months still have a lot of heat since I chose hotter varieties to begin with. I'll even tailor my variety choices to the year's expected weather (to the extent that you can know at seed-starting time what sort of summer to expect). If I expect really hot, dry summer, I may choose jalapenos with a lower SHU and do the opposite if I expect a cooler, wetter summer. It helps somewhat. Deer are just that way. They want what they want when they want it. You can jazz up ham and cheese sandwiches by spreading a thin layer of Habanero Gold Jelly on them! Of course, this only works if you happen to have Habanero Gold Jelly handy. Jen, Whatever your pepper is, I don't recognize it and it didn't come from me. Could it possibly me one of the ornamental pepper varieties? It stayed cool, cloudy and mostly rainy---just a slow, even rain that fell all day long until 4 or 5 pm---all day long and the high temperature here only made it up to 66 degrees. It felt like autumn after feeling like summer for far too long. We ended up with 5.8" of rain, so certainly cannot complain about the rain missing us this time. I think the last time we had 5.8" of rain from one rain event, even a multi-day rain event, likely was back in February. It is nice to see all the moisture, but I'm sure the mud and the puddles will get old quickly, and the mosquito explosion will not be welcome at all. We usually have mosquitoes all winter here, so it isn't like we even can count on cold weather to knock back the population completely. I dread the mosquito part of the equation. We'll see if this large amount of rainfall heals up all the cracks in the ground from this summer's drought. I think it will and hope I'm right about that. My garden is a lake as the timbers from each raised bed sort of serve as mini-dams that hold water when there is plentiful rainfall. A lake is probably preferable to a desert after the summer we just had. One lone hummingbird was spotted visiting the feeders in the rain, and then seen visiting the trumpet creeper flowers after the rain stopped. This is the third day in a row to spot only one hummingbird. I don't know if it is the same one, staying here and refueling before flying further south, or if I'm seeing various single ones. So far the last few days, all the hummingbirds I've seen have been ruby-throated ones. The main crowd left a few days ago. The deer returned in force to feed tonight and were pretty hungry. I hope they enjoyed their dinner. At least I didn't have to drag out the water hose to fill up their waterer for them because the rain took care of it---it was, in fact, overflowing. They might not even drink from the waterer now that all the creeks and ponds have water in them again, but it is there if they need it. I'm thinking if an unwanted large predator is lurking, we'll know it soon enough because it likely will leave tracks in the mud if it comes anywhere near the house, garden, outbuildings or the deer feeding area. Vultures have been circling our woodland and Tim thinks this means some predator has killed and possibly cached its prey back there. I pointed out anything could have happened---just some wild thing could have died of natural causes---and we'd still have vultures circling. Neither of us is willing to venture into the snake-infested woods to see if we can find whatever it is that is attracting the vultures. If this was November and we'd had colder nights, venturing into the woods wouldn't be so risky, but we've been too warm recently and the snakes are still very active. Dawn...See MoreJanuary 2019, Week 3, The Gloom Goes On and On and....
Comments (65)Jacob, That is very peculiar cat behavior. I've never seen cats that won't groom themselves, except occasionally a very old cat (late teens or older) that is getting old, tired and sort of sickly and just kinda does stop grooming when they are in the final months of their lives. I have one 18 or 19 year old cat that I have to bathe now because that's the stage in his life that he has arrived at. He is shrinking down to nothing....like very old humans do. Since he generally took care of his own grooming for almost his entire life, it takes two of us to bathe him---one to hold him so he doesn't escape and the other to bathe him in the tub or our deep farm sink in the kitchen. I hope your seeds from Victory Seeds do well for you. I have purchased tons of seeds from them over the years and have been very happy with them. They are extremely dedicated to preserving heirloom varieties. I am watching the weather closely. Y'all know I go on instincts that I jokingly refer to as the voice in my head. Well, the voice is my head is cautioning me to go slow and to not get in a big hurry to do anything, so I'm trying to comply. I just feel like we haven't had enough winter yet. Often, when we have a warm January, we have a bad March and April. Well, so far, January has been pretty warm overall. Right now it is almost 9 p.m. here and the outdoor temperature is 61. That seems so odd to me. We just aren't cooling down. I guess when the cold front gets here, our temperatures will fall like a rock. Megan, Trial and error gardening is true gardening...and the best kind of gardening....where nothing is guaranteed and anxiety levels build as you wonder if what you're doing is what the plant needs. So, I hope it works for you. I think back to my dad's generation (he was born in 1919) and to his dad's generation before him (born in the late 1880s I think) and I wonder how they farmed and did everything they did with....no internet, no gardening shows on TV or the radio, very primitive agricultural universities that did publish occasional ag bulletins, very few books available to dirt poor farmers, etc. Where did the know-how come from? I suppose it was handed down father to son, etc., but also bet there was a ton of trial and error involved. Nancy, I agree that it feels like we are waiting for someone to drop a bunch of bad weather on our heads. What if it doesn't happen? What if everything sort of fizzles out as it blows through? I suppose I wouldn't mind and I wouldn't complain, because it would be hard to be unhappy if we weren't as cold as expected or as rainy/snowy as expected or as windy as expected. At least it seems like this weather will race through here pretty quickly and won't linger here for days and days. It can only help that they have raised those overnight lows a lot higher over the last few days. Today was oddly warm. I don't know what to make of this weather. We hit 66 degrees, and had south wind and sunny skies until some clouds came in late in the day, and now it won't cool down. I am not complaining, just trying to understand why it doesn't want to cool down at night. Last night was pretty warm all night long as well. I guess that changes overnight sometime after midnight here. Megan, I am so happy for your friend. I can only imagine the great joy she is feeling now. My wish for her is a smooth pregnancy, an easy delivery (well, it never is easy, but you know what I mean) and a healthy baby. I cannot think of a single way to include tomato seed packets in a shower theme. Nancy, You need to be distracted by other things so you won't fixate on gardening during this hostile weather time of the year. Here is how I distracted myself today....the thing that I did to push my focus to something other than gardening and then, in parentheses, the thoughts that were running around in my brain so you can decide if the distractions worked. Lillie came over to spend the day because it was a school holiday for her. (We have a whole day.....we could work in the garden together.....her name is also the name of a flower. Still, it is foggy and cloudy and chilly, so not a day to garden with Lillie.) We went to Frisco TX to CarVana to pick up the new Acadia SUV. On the way down, we discussed everything among the four of us (Tim, Chris, Lillie and I) from school to work to vehicles to friends and pets....you name it, we discussed it. We did not discuss gardening at all. (This is what it is like to be in a car with three non-gardeners. Boo hoo. Not one word about gardening. I was dying.) Lillie and I were the least bit interested in talking to the car guys, test driving the vehicle, discussing the extended warranty, etc. because as long as Tim was happy with it, we were going to be happy, so we got the guys to drop us off at the nearby IKEA, which is our happy place. What did they have? Oh wow, some new Boho type patterns on pillows and some lamp shades and fabrics. (Boho? Flowered prints and paisley. Bright colors. I was in heaven.) Then we walked through a bunch of furniture (who cares) but spotted some lovely new vases (for cut flowers, of course, I said to myself). When we got closer to the Marketplace, they had fake indoor plants, plant stands, hanging planters, vases, self-watering pots, watering cans, more plant stands, a ladder that leans against the wall with little pots hanging from it (would be perfect for succulents....I want one), etc. There was outdoor furniture, outdoor storage units, etc. (Gardening! IKEA is into gardening now. Spring is here. My life is complete! I am so happy.) Ring....ring....ring.....all too quickly, my phone was ringing and it was the guys to say they were headed our way with Chris in his vehicle and Tim in our new one. I mean, it was in the blink of an eye. Lillie and I weren't even a quarter of the way through the store yet. Panic time. With hope in my voice I asked if they wanted to come inside and meet us there or if they wanted us to come out. They suggested we come out so we all could see the new SUV, figure out what all the buttons and dials and crap do, etc. etc. etc. Since that was the purpose of the trip, I agreed to come out the same door through which we had entered less than a half-hour before, and Lillie and I rushed our way through the infernal maze that is IKEA because I know all the shortcuts. (I was lamenting the fact I hadn't grabbed a cart and thrown all the gardening stuff in it as we looked at things, because I honestly want a lot of it......). Outside I called them and asked what row they were in. They said halfway between I and J. (I? Ice plant. J? Jasmine.......now I've got plants on the brain......it is not my fault. I blame IKEA for having such a lovely selection of garden enabling stuff.) The SUV was beautiful and gorgeous, leather seats and all sort of fancy stuff that Tim and Chris love.....heated seats (in case I get cold while hauling home bags of mulch in early Spring). I wasn't thinking about the vehicle. I was thinking about how much gardening stuff I could cram into it. (Hmmm. Fold down the back row of seats and we can fit anything in there....a new wheelbarrow.....bags of mulch.....how many bags of mulch? Maybe 12? Fold down the middle seats and we can probably get 16 bags in there.....or more. Hmm. How many flats of plants can we carry to the Spring Fling with the second and third rows of seat folded down? That is the sort of vehicle-related thoughts that were running through my mind.) We went to On The Border and ate lunch. (On the Border. Border? I like borders. I love flowering borders on all four sides of the garden filled with flowers and herbs for the wild things. Borders are nice. Food, wait, food? You guys want me to stop daydreaming about flower borders and order lunch? Okay. Fine. Be that way. Clearly you all are fuddy duddies who only want to discuss vehicles and the football playoffs when, clearly, people in a restaurant called On the Border should be discussing flowering garden borders. Whatever. I do not fit in with you people---I am from a different tribe. Where is my tribe????) We ate lunch. (Restaurant tomatoes. Ugh. I want real home-grown tomatoes.) Chris headed off the bird seed store and Tim, Lillie and I headed for CostCo. We hurried through it, since we have shopping there down to a science. There was all sorts of gardening stuff there now, but I didn't even stop and look because we had a long To Do list of places to stop and shop on the way home and I just wanted to get it done and get headed north out of the DFW metroplex before rush hour traffic began. (Don't worry, I consoled myself, you'll be back here in 2 or 3 weeks and they'll have more gardening stuff in stock and you won't be in such a hurry. You can buy what you want that day.) We stopped at Sam's Club to pick up two items (specific brands we like) that CostCo doesn't carry. It was a very quick in-and-out, but guess what I saw. Gardening stuff. (Hmmmm. Roses. I wouldn't plant those until February. Packaged perennials. I need to buy those now before they sit in the plastic bags too long and rot. I got a great bag of lilies here last year for Lillie. Bags of soil-less mix. Oooh, I always need some of that. Planters. Tools. Raised bed kits. I am in hog heaven. I hope it takes Tim a while to find the Cat Litter. Darn it. He is back already. What is the rush....) and out of the store we went, all too soon. On to Gainesville on the endless trip home. I did the only thing a smart woman could do when making a trip to the feed store. I said "We'll just sit here in the car and try to figure out what all these buttons do" (I did this on purpose because I didn't want to buy potatoes, onion, seeds, etc. with a big winter storm bearing down on us. See, I use the brain God gave me sometimes. I am not totally garden obsessed. Not really. Not too much. Not much at all. Hmm. This vehicle's back door can be opened with the remote.....I can have a flat full of plants and still open it, virtually hands free, and put the plants in the area behind the back row of seats. Cool! No. I. am. not. gardening.obsessed. Why do you ask?) Home again. Driving past the garden. Looking at all the green. Thinking how it might not be green by Sunday evening. Proud of myself that I hardly spoke about gardening on this trip.....not to Tim, not to Chris and not to Lillie. (Whew! What a relief. I didn't torment the three non-gardeners with lots of garden talk. See there. Distraction worked. We didn't discuss gardening at all. I didn't even buy a gardening magazine and Sam's Club had 2 or 3 of them on the magazine rack. I am so proud of myself. Nobody but me knows that my mind wandered away from the conversations we were having and thought of nothing but gardening no matter where we went. I have concluded I can be externally distracted from gardening stuff, but internally.....that is where my mind goes. Is this normal? It is normal for me. Is it normal to carry on an entire conversation about non-gardening things with other people while you are carrying on a gardening conversation with only yourself inside your own head? And those other people have no idea your mind is fixated on gardening? Am I nuts? (Hmmm. Nuts. We grow nuts here. Pecans. Hickories. Black walnuts. Ooops. Sorry. My mind 'went there' for just a minute.) See there, Nancy, if you just get out of the house and go do other things, you can make it through the entire day without buying one single thing related to gardening and without saying one word aloud about gardening. You won't order seeds or plants. You won't pick up a few things while you're in the store. Why, you'll hardly have gardening on your mind at all. I know this because I did it! Those random garden thoughts that roll through our minds? Nobody can control those and I don't even try. I'll try to think of other things to distract us tomorrow because I fear the weather will pin us down indoors, merely because none of us like to have frostbitten nosies and toesies. The wind chill is supposed to be brutal. Remember, y'all, wind chill only applies to fauna and not to florals.......so our plants only have to endure the wind and the cold temperatures, but aren't, technically speaking, affected by wind chill itself. Is is Spring yet? I cannot remember if I already asked that question today. Oh, and the answer is no, it is not. Luckily for us, we can start planting in late winter.......Crazy? No, I am not crazy. Dawn...See MoreSeptember 2019, Week 1
Comments (39)Thank you all for your kind words and, yes, it has been a really tough summer, but we'll get through it. I know that I cannot comprehend what Kyle's parents and other family members are going through. It is so hard still for me to believe it is true that he is dead---my denial cannot last forever though. His dad describes feeling 'heart-broken', and I am not sure how that sort of heartbreak ever heals, but I do know that we all find ways to carry on after losing loved ones. To me, it just seems so much harder when someone loses a child, as several of you have.....perhaps it is because we parents always expect to outlive our children even though we know this often is not the case. Rebecca, I am so relieved they were able to fix your AC. That is an enormous relief. Ours is 21 years old and we just cross our fingers each summer and hope it makes it through another year. So far, so good...but we all know that at any given time, our AC systems can go out, can be beyond repair and then we receive the dreaded news that it must be replaced. I am glad this was not that time for you. I am about to the point where I wonder if we should just spend the money to replace ours now instead of having to worry about it going out all summer long every summer. I'm married to a thrifty Yankee, though, so if I dared to suggest we go ahead and replace the system now before it completely dies, he'd be horrified because, you know, it might last another year or two or three. My brother did finally replace my mom's HVAC system a few years ago, when it was around 30 years old. I cannot imagine our AC compressor lasting another 9 years, but I guess you never know. Larry, There's nothing wrong with rambling! I hope you'll just take your time and pace yourself, knowing you'll get everything done sooner or later. I think learning to pace ourselves, not stay on our feet too long and work at a steady, not break-neck, pace is one of the harder things about getting older. I'm getting better and better about it as I go along. I do look back, rather longingly, at the years when I could work in the garden and yard all day every day from sunrise to sunset and go to bed tired, yet wake up raring to go each new morning. I no longer can work all day out in the heat or wake up raring to go again the next day either. More and more, I'm just happy that I wake up. Getting older is not for sissies! Nancy, I'm glad they had your phone. We have the Find My iphone app on our phones, and it is set up so Tim can use his phone to locate my phone or vice versa if we lose them. It comes in handy when someone (ahem, that would be me) loses their phone someplace stupid and cannot find it....like in the car or in the garden, buried under some tall plants or something. I'm sure it could find the phone if we lost it further from home, but neither one of us ever has, for which I'm grateful. I am really bad about misplacing my phone around the house, but that's just a simple matter of retracing one's steps until you find the last place you set it down. I think afternoon naps are wonderful! I think the people in Mexico have the best idea with the afternoon siestas. Why not sleep through the worst part of a hot summer/autumn day, and then wake up all revived and refreshed and full of energy for the rest of the day? I take an afternoon nap every now and then (especially if fire/medical calls woke us up during the night, because I never can fall back asleep after that) and I love those afternoon naps. I wish I could make a practice of taking one every day, but there's just not that sort of time. Jennifer, Your back area that you want to beautify sounds like it has a lot of potential. I am sure you will have a lot of fun beautifying it to suit you. I am glad Mason has a fella who is a keeper, and I'm sure she'll be thrilled when the ring comes....whether it is now or later. I'm happy for her. Sometimes it can be really hard for someone to meet the right person, and waiting for the right one to come along can be really frustrating. When okra is running out of time, heat or daylength, it will start dropping leaves and tend not to replace them. In our garden, that usually happens in October. You're further north, so it might happen earlier for you. Our asparagus has done that too, despite my best efforts to eradicate it so I can use that bed for something else. I'm starting to think I'll never be able to kill it just by relentlessly cutting it back all summer. I think the asparagus sort of perceives prolonged drought as dormancy, and then when rain comes, it breaks out all sorts of new spears. At least that is what ours does and it sounds like yours is behaving in a similar way. I have been reflecting on my 2019 garden, but you know, it really performed about as I expected with the weather we had. I adapted and changed my plans a lot early in the season, partly because of all the rainy weather and clouds, and partly because of all the issues with sick friends and relatives and with me just knowing in advance it was going to be a really tough summer, so I cannot complain about how it did. It performed better than expected in some ways--the bush beans, which I did plant pretty early to beat the heat, really over-performed, but it is hard to complain about putting up too many beans in the freezer because I know we'll eat them all eventually. Even the tomatoes produced very well, but again, only because I planted super early. I don't think they would have done as well if planted later. The only big surprise might be the roselle plants, which are much broader and bushier than usual, and I think the August rain gets credit for that. The real test will be how well they flower, and that doesn't even start until October so we won't know for a while yet. If they flower a lot, I'll make roselle jam, but even if they don't flower, they are a lovely background plant for other plants in the garden. Onions were a disappointment to some extent, but I had planted late after debating whether it was worth it to plant them at all in such wet conditions. We still got plenty of onions, and we still are using them and have enough to use for several more months, but some of them were a lot smaller than usual although some were the normal size. Usually I'd be making pretty concrete plans now for what veggies to grow next year, but since I am planting the front garden entirely as a cutting flower garden as a method of crop rotation, veggies aren't on my mind as much. Flowers sure are, though! Jen, The cosmos I planted late are peaking now, and I'm so glad to see them blooming so much. Between them, the zinnias, the Mexican sunflowers and the various celosias, there's lots of annuals in bloom for the butterflies, bees, hummingbirds, etc. Of course, many perennials are in bloom too, but it is the annuals that carry the burden of feeding the wild things at this time of the year. I think tomatoes will do great for you in mineral tubs. Mine in tubs still are producing from an April planting and, in fact, I have a couple of tomatoes to harvest today---I believe these are JD's Special C-Tex, and they have produced well early in the season, in the middle of the season, and now, late in the season. I think the fruit that are ripe now set during a rainy spell in the midst of the hot summer, and I'm surprised they have ripened as quickly as they have. The tomatoes in the compost pile are doing well and producing usable fruit too, so never discount the importance of tomato volunteers if they're in a place where you can leave them and let them do their thing. Canning with a water bath canner is so easy and you can make candied jalapenos in no time at all. You don't really need lessons for boiling water bath canning---just follow the instructions in the Ball Blue Book, or on the website of the National Center for Home Food Preservation. Now, for pressure canning, I do think it is best to take classes or learn from an experienced canner because of the higher danger level. You can use boiling water bath canning for jellies, jams, pickles (including pickled and candied peppers), some tomato products (like salsa), etc., and it really is easy. Don't be afraid to give it a try. I did it all backwards by the way, starting with pressure canning and then taking up boiling water bath canning, which seems totally backwards to me now, but I grew up in a home where some food was canned every year, so I knew the basics from helping my dad can long before I actually canned on my own as a young adult. Really, boiling water bath canning and pickling are so simple that once you do it, you'll be amazed at how easy it is. Dawn...See MoreSeptember 2019, Week 4
Comments (22)Thanks, Amy and Nancy. What a year it has been, though in all the wrong ways. I'm looking forward more than ever to 2020, or even to October, which at least is coming soon. Amy, Do you know what stripped the kale? Have you seen any cabbage loopers or anything? Maybe fall armyworms? Sadly, at our house, when the kale is being stripped, it usually is our own chickens feasting on our kale. I love Beck's Big Buck, but its size does stun a person when they are new to it. I like to slice them and oven roast them. You can sprinkle the sliced with a little olive oil and seasoning and create okra chips that are (to me) much tastier and obviously healthier than potato chips. With the cucumber plants and as moist as it has been, I'd suspect disease more so than pests. I hope y'all have a good weekend too. Nancy, There's three kittens and they all look just like their mother except they are going to be bigger than her. They are growing fast now that they are eating regularly. I think they are about five to six weeks old and beginning to get a little bit more used to my presence every day, but it is going to be hard to tame them. Still, I am making progress. One of them no longer runs and hides immediately when it sees me---it sits and waits to see if I am bringing food. lol. With cats, you can develop a friendship over food, so I'm off to a good start there. I need to spend a lot of time trying to tame them over the next several weeks and it likely will involve putting a large cage in the garage and moving their cat food dishes into it. Once they are used to eating in the cage, hopefully I can catch them in the cage and bring them indoors to start working to tame them. It needs to happen while they are pretty young, or they'll be impossible to tame. As soon as we get them caged, their mom will go to the vet to be spayed so that she won't have another litter of kittens. If I can't tame them, they can become barn cats/garage cats, but I'd rather tame them so they can enjoy being around humans. If we let them remain feral, it will be hard to catch them in order to take them to a vet for shots and medical attention as we'd have to trap them and then they'd be upset, hysterical wrecks. I'd like to avoid trapping if at all possible. I guess I can spend the non-gardening season taming feral kittens. I'm amazed they've survived living outdoors this long because we have raccoons in the yard every night and coons will kill and eat kittens (or even adult cats). This kittens basically have survived by climbing up into the engine of our Dodge pickup truck to sleep at night. You have to lift the hood, check for them and make sure they aren't in there before you can start up the engine....every single time. They also like to hide on top of the tornado shelter, which is covered by a large trumpet creeper vine that gives them lots of cover, so if we can peer into that mess and see them, at least we know they aren't under or in the truck. Have fun with the church group tomorrow. I'm sure the house and yard look simply splendid. I love our house when it is perfectly clean and tidy, which generally doesn't happen nearly as often as I'd like! You know, there's a level of everyday clean or family clean but then there is holiday/visitor clean. I love it when I take the time to get it all holiday/visitor clean BUT I don't love it enough to keep it that spic and span every day of the year either. I hope you get a good night's sleep so you do not feel exhausted tomorrow! Today there were new monarchs in the garden. I don't know if they hatched here, but they were enjoying nectaring at various plants. It is too soon for us to be seeing migrants here, so these are local more or less, one way or another, though they could be regional or local butterflies beginning to mass prior to migrating. All the butterflies and bees are why I don't rip out any plants too early....any more, it is all about them in the garden, not us. I looked at the plants at Home Depot today (inside the garden center, I forgot to look at the ones outside on the sidewalk) and they are starting to compress them down into a smaller area, probably in order to make way for holiday merchandise. They still had some shrubs and perennials, and some fall annual warm-season color, but nothing new for cool weather yet, and I forgot to check to see what Wal-Mart had. They had a lot of tropical plants that would look lovely indoors if only we didn't have cats and dogs that would destroy them. We were buying paint at HD to paint the house, a job which has been on our To Do list ever since we got the new roof put on the house, which I think was in July. We totally changed the shingles from light colored to dark colored and wanted a new paint color that would look better with the new color of the roof. We've just been waiting endlessly for cooler weather to arrive because who wants to paint when the heat index is 108 or 110 or 112? We cannot wait too long now that it is almost October or the nights will start to get too cool for the paint to dry properly, so we are going to start painting Saturday. I would have started tomorrow but Fred's funeral is tomorrow afternoon, and I don't want to go to the funeral with paint in my hair or anything. I'm seeing a definite pattern change in the behavior of the hummingbirds over the last week or two. Several weeks ago, hummingbirds were flocking to the feeders all day---flying back and forth from blooming plants to feeders in a dizzying whirl of activity that went all all day long. I knew they were our locals eating extra food to put on the fat they need to help sustain them on their journey south to Mexico. It was amazing to watch and then it ended, and I knew at that point that the males were headed south, though we still had females and juveniles feeding all day long but not in such a crazy frenzy---they seem a bit calmer. Over the weekend and at the start of this week, it appears the females and juveniles too had headed south, and we had a day or two with practically no hummingbirds. Now we have migrants. One way you can tell is that they appear suddenly at the feeders early in the day, feed like mad, and then pretty much disappear. I assume these are migrants eating as they travel south. Then, in the evening you'll see more of them. I don't think it is the same ones that I saw in the morning. They seem tired, and content to sit on the feeder perches and feed a long time before drifting away before dark. Then, in the morning, they probably feed again and leave on the next leg of their journey, and then new travelers come in, sometimes in the morning hours, and sometimes in the early evening hours and repeat the process all over again. They're definitely spending more time at the feeders, and somewhat less time at the plants in the garden or around the house. There's nothing feeding in between the morning crowd and the evening crowd. It is fascinating to watch it all happen. Oh, and also at Home Depot today, there was one lone hummingbird who was visiting all the flowers and was so thrilled. It was just happy and chirpy and the whole nine yards and not at all bothered by being in very close proximity to people. I forgot to ask if it is a regular visitor there or just passing through. The garden is full of sulphur butterflies, and some of the candletree leaves are being devoured, so we may have sulphur cats. I just haven't had time to check. The partridge pea plants in the pastures still are in bloom but there's much fewer flowers on them now, so I think they are about done. I'm glad we have the candletrees to fill that niche of time in October after the partridge peas finish up because their blooms won't last much longer. Helenium, goldenrod and and a few other fall bloomers fill all the fencerows and any pastures that aren't regularly hayed or grazed down low, so butterflies and bees have all the flowering plants they possibly could want right now, and that's such a good thing. Our weather was slightly cooler today, but still hot, though our heat index did not break 100 today---yay! The HX was 99 but that is am improvement and we'll take any improvement we can get. Have a great weekend, y'all. Maybe cooler weather is coming next week. Dawn...See MoreAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
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Rebecca (7a)