The weather has been hot and humid, with intervals of swirling breezes that stir up the air. During the gusts of wind on Saturday, my delicate blooming plants dropped flowers around the yard, so I gathered more of them for my potpourri than I would on a typical summer weekend. I closely examined the fun shape of snapdragon blooms, and marveled at the rich purple of delphiniums (larkspur) that I've grown from seed for the first time this year.

The landlady is considering another visit soon, so I am putting lots of effort into tidying up the lawn, hedges, and container plants. The profusion of bushes in front of our bedroom window has gotten out of hand again, so I made a "first pass" at trimming it back on Sunday. The landlady insists on not having any of this hedge touching the wall of the house, so I crawl between the house and the bushes (some of which are prickly blackberries!) with my clippers. I am nimble and bendy, but it's still a bit of an ordeal. I ended up with handfuls of rosemary trimmings, so gave some to my friend Amy who stopped by. Then I used about 10 stems of it in a rosemary-lemon roasted chicken dish for dinner that evening.

I've gotten behind in transplanting my seedlings to larger containers, but hopefully will start to do so later this week. One of the morning glories has gotten big enough to start blooming, and some of the cayenne peppers are pretty tall for the tiny pots they're in. Other seed pots that don't have anything sprouted yet have had their name tags blown away by the wind, so I guess I'll re-identify what's in them once leaves start to push through the soil!

The tomato plants are growing nicely, now large enough to need the support of wire cages or additional bamboo stakes. I attached the supports with twist-ties saved from grocery store produce bags. To fend off blossom-end rot, I gave all the tomato plants a third treatment of calcium spray. Some fruits are turing from green to yellow-orange, so they may be ripe in about 10 days.

I have also used bamboo to brace the crocosmia, which grow from small bulbs into 2-foot tall leaves and flower stems that fall over easily. They're now kept from overshadowing a patch of our sorry-looking lawn. I am going to spend some hours re-seeding the grass under the crocosmia and in other spots, as well as watering more frequently and pulling weeds, so all of the yard will be in much improved shape if the landlady visits.