‘Dig’ The Earth

Most of the month of August and the first half of September were unbearably hot and dry during the days.  As September approached you could feel the air cool nicely in the evenings which made it comfortable to sit outside by a fire.  Talk about good camping weather.

Over Labor Day weekend we spent some time with my brother and parents and he made a bonfire.  OH, what a bonfire it was!  The flames shot what looked like 50 feet in the air and made baked apples of the apples still hanging on the trees nearby.   The leaves and branches that faced the fire were completely scorched.  We’ll have to see in the spring if the little guys make it.  We were afraid that we’d have to call the fire department.  Gladly, the fire was far enough away from anything large and flamable, aka, house, car, field full of dry crops.  Also, surprisingly there was enough moisture in the surrounding trees to keep them from catching fire.

My brother had no idea that the pile of brush would catch so readily.  It had been sitting there for at least a year and my parents had bugged him to just burn it.  He wanted to have a party though and so he invited us and my husband’s niece with her husband to join us.   There weren’t a lot of people but it was a nice excuse to relax, roast marshmallows (and apple trees) and camp out.  At six months pregnant – and never having “camped” before – the experience was a bit awkward.  But it was fun.

About a week and a half ago it rained before Ike hit the coast full force.  It only gave our region of the Midwest about 1/10″ of rain.  The ground was so incredibly dry that after a few hours you couldn’t even notice that it had rained.  There was not a trace of mud and the soil was still hard as a rock.  Needless to say our plants have suffered the worst.  Many if not all have died back to the ground already.  I’ve not had the energy or strength to go out and water them by hand.  Though I have babied the plants that are in containers near the house, like my tomatoes, basil and few annual plants.

Finally, this week we got some much needed rain – about 2″.  Sadly, this comes at the expense of our neighbors along the Gulf Coast.  They get too much water just so we can get a little.

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.