The Great Melt of '26

 Hot.  So hot.  Melting.  Stuck indoors.

Guess that's a good excuse for an update.

My focused tasks lost focus with the weather.  I'm a larger lady and I don't do well in these hot, humid days of summer.  I've also kind of lost my drive.  I'm dealing with a few not so great issues with my health and one of the mules, so it makes it hard to really throw myself into the yard chores.  I did get the squash plants in the ground, so that's good.  I'd call that a focused task since I had to pull all the grass that came up through the mulch on the bank, but after bumping into a milk snake that was close to three feet long, my focus went right out the window.  I made sure he stayed on his side of the bank while I worked on mine, so the squash are a little shifted to one side of the area.  

Most of the spring sown crops have or are failing.  I've lost half the onions and shallots, and the snap peas are pretty pathetic.  The potatoes are doing great above ground.  I can only hope for the same for below.  I lost one of the six tomatoes but replaced it with a pineapple tomato variety.  I can't wait to try that in salsa.  The peppers are doing well, but I never got around to planting my corn...again.  I haven't planted any cucumbers yet, either.  I'm really slacking this year.  The hillside garden is more weeds than anything else.

The cottage gardens look pretty good despite me drowning them in soil.   I did lose a lot of plants over the winter, but some of the bulbs, like the varieties of alliums I added, are filling in empty spaces.  

The meadow, though.  Wow, is that really starting to come to!  Most people would probably identify at least a third of the plants as weeds, but I love them all. The pale purple and Bush's coneflowers are thriving, the field daisies have run rampant throughout, and my white penstemon seeded a baby that actually bloomed this year.  And it's still going like gangbusters.

 

 

 

See, not all doom and gloom.  As a bonus, I was able to meet my great granddaughter.  Her parents used wildflowers as a theme for her baby shower and in her room, and as soon as I heard that, I decided this was Charlotte's meadow.   It was fantastic to have her see her namesake garden, even if the copious amount of bees meant she couldn't really wander through it.  She managed to at least sample a small part of it.

Also, there is evolution happening in my water feature!

 

I've never seen them reach this phase in past years, so I'm pretty stoked.  Live long and prosper, little tadpoles!