Weekly Update From the Garden

We actually had RAIN this week. Woot! I mean, like, the soil got wet and stuff...and for at least an hour, I am sure, we were under 90 degrees...How exciting...
Yes, this is Texas in the summer. Lawn is almost totally asleep (although aforementioned rain wake it up a bit). After experimenting with various specimen of shrubs and trees, The Husband made the realization that ''full sun'' labels on plants in Texas mean ''almost total shade''. Heh. More planting this fall. My tomatoes are still trying to produce. Amazing. The peppers are all waking up, taking a deep breath as if to say: ""Well, hello, scorching heat of the South, I LOOOOVE you so!'' The habanero pepper grew more in the past month than the sum total of all growth since April, and the rest of the peppers are all in flower. Weird, this dichotomy between tomatoes and peppers...but I cannot complain, we had loads of tomatoes this year, and the peppers will see us though until a second crop of them can be planted for the fall season. Yum, cherry tomatoes.
In my herb garden, the lavenders continue to flower and grow, and so are the citrosa geraniums(actually, these latter ones are rather huge and healthy). This year's basil plants are smaller than last year's enormous monsters (SIX freezer bags forth of basil leaves from two plants), but fragrant and healthy. Must pinch one of them this weekend while leaving the other in flower so it reseeds; maybe I''ll have volunteer basils next year 9unlikely, but hey, one can always try). The oregano totally overgrew the container it was originally planted, so much so that unless I tell you you wil not know it's sitting in a terracotta window box. Yay.
The two climbing roses are flowering again, although with less abundance than in the spring when they were completely covered with flowers, and they developed new shoots too. Gotta train the new canes up. The rest of the roses are hanging on, although the ones we planted this year are not doing very well, despite the recent round of fertilizing. Note to self: round of foliar feeding this weekend.

Will put up some pictures this evening from home to illustrate: until then: happy gardening!

My two