‘Dig’ The Earth

It has been at least a couple of weeks since we have had any significant rainfall. And it’s been hot, really hot. With temps up in the 90s and little cloud cover of breeze the afternoons and sometimes even the mornings and evenings have been unbearable. Thank goodness for central air.

The poor plants have been suffering though. We were gone for three days during this dry spell and I’d say 90% of my potted plants that were outdoors died of thirst. I thought I’d given them enough water before we left, but it must have gotten too hot for them to handle. Gladly the majority of these are herbs and they can be dried before use anyway so it works out OK. The one I’m lamenting right now is my basil plant. There is nothing like fresh, green basil with tomatoes and mozzarella in a balsamic vinaigrette. Now I have only a dried out woody stem and hardly any seeds to speak of .

At least most of my indoor plants survived my absense. Especially, my basil plants. They are too small yet to harvest a great deal from them, but I’m working on getting spaces for them outdoors. That’s what I was working on this morning before it got up to 90 and just uncomfortable. When I checked weather.com and it said we had a 40% chance of rain showers I was hoping not to get stuck in the other 60% of the region. When the radar showed no clouds this morning about 10:30 I didn’t have much hope. About 3 PM it started thundering and just about 4 PM we started with a steady rainfall that the ground is sucking up like a hungry baby sucks on a bottle of milk.

So much for my weed pulling for the rest of the day. At least the plants are getting a much needed drink. This will make my work much easier too, the ground won’t be so stinking hard.