Well, we have reached the summer garden doldrums. Every vegetable has fizzled out in the heat and humidity except the tomatoes, and they are starting to look ragged. Despite the ragged looks, while I was away this week, and in the couple of days I have been back, the tomato bed yielded almost 17 pounds of beautiful fruit. Have you noticed the subtle change in all the plants, and in the light and shadows in the garden? Summer is waning, hard as that is to believe. I have gotten out my leftover seeds and my garden calendar, and am planning what to plant this week in the now empty spaces where the squash and beans grew. It is time to start putting in the fall garden!
In the non-edible parts of the yard, the zinnias are flourishing, and I picked a huge bouquet of reds and pinks and oranges yesterday. A pale purple weed in the bindweed or morning glory family is climbing up the brush pile back near the marsh, making a beautiful picture.
I had every intention of finally getting into the bee hives today to harvest any summer honey they may have up in the supers, but the little tropical storm off the coast is stirring up the weather just enough to make it necessary to leave them alone yet again. I hope that there is some honey still there whenever I finally get a chance to look in the hives. If I had been on top of things I would have taken these honey supers off a month ago. Look at how large the hives are with all the honey supers on top. Despite the size of both hives, the bees have again multiplied to a point that they were not able to all squeeze into the hive last night, and I found a clump of bees out in the rain on the front of each hive this morning. Luckily the rain has stopped, and they were able to dry off and begin foraging late this morning.
