I have no pics today. It’s hot, and I’ve been keeping my garden time down to a minimum. Usually, I’m outside just before the sun goes down, which is not prime photo time.

Anyway, here’s the garden news for the week:

1. In keepimg with the general tone of this year’s garden experience, I moved a landscape timber a few days ago, and came up with my right hand COVERED in fire ants. Even though I got them off me pretty quickly, I still ended up with about a dozen bites. My hand hurts, and I’m cranky about it.

2. I managed two hours in the front yard earlier in the week. I mowed, edged, swept, unloaded a bunch of broken concrete pieces from the back of my truck that had been there for a month, sprayed Roundup in all the appropriate places, and fed both the front and back yards with Garrett juice. I also clipped and cut back to try to keep everything healthy and blooming.

3. I’m getting about two or three ripe cherry tomatoes every day now, and a roma every two or three days. There are still oodles of green ones on all the bushes. The Early Girls are late, and not nearly ready to ripen. It’s agonizing waiting for all that tomatoey goodness.

4. The zucchini are not producing well at all. Maybe one squash every week or so, from three plants. The cukes have pretty much given up, and seem to be dying off the trellis, although the part that’s down low with the squash seems green and happy. There just aren’t any cukes. It’s disappointing.

5. I am plotting the late summer and fall garden now. I’m waffling about bed construction. I don’t care for the cement block beds I’ve put in, but I think I’d like them better if they were two blocks tall, capped, and mulched in between. The alternative is cedar, which is painfully expensive. I have a feeling I’ll be buying more cement blocks this week, to put in vegetable beds along the Good Neighbor fenceline. I want to get another round of tomatoes, cukes, squash and eggplant in next month, and I don’t see that I’ll be able to afford the cedar to build that many beds.

6. I think two of the Knockout roses I planted in the front yard are dead. I just didn’t get them into the ground soon enough to take hold before the heat set in. I noticed some five gallon yellow Knockouts at Lowe’s this week, and much as I hate to give them any more of my gardening dollars, I might get one, and replace one of the dead ones. The other can be replaced with four nerve daisies, which I still haven’t planted.