Showing posts with label John Fannick phlox. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Fannick phlox. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Heat Kills: A Gardening Ramble

These poor phlox keep trying. They looked so good just a few days ago.

My garden is suffering under the sun’s merciless onslaught. The John Fannick phlox have withered, as would most of the other plants if I failed to give them their daily watering, and the lobelias are gone.

Mr. Stripy is still barren as is the newcomer. Shaking the plants and threatening them doesn’t do any good. I am beginning to think that the pollinators prefer the other flowers to the tomatoes. In a couple of weeks, I will pull up Mr. Stripy and plant a rank of fall tomatoes from a real nursery.

Even the sunflowers that Beccano insisted we plant (I grew up thinking of them as weeds—sorry, any Kansans who stumble on this post.) are wilting in the unrelenting solar oven we call a climate.

The remnants of the last tropical storm to hit the Texas coast brought us ¾” of rain. It took less than two days for that relief to become only a vague memory. The storm that hit yesterday brought us almost nothing. It did keep the temperatures down to the upper 90s for a couple of days, so I’m not complaining.

One star is the Jacobi, which is flowering again.


11 August Update: Added phlox photo taken at the time but not uploaded.

Monday, July 07, 2008

Working for Fruit

Just because they’re pretty

This hearkens back to 17 March. I mentioned then that my former boss had recommended me to the local fruit company. Well, they called me and set up a telephone interview. I forgot to tell my friend.

So today I answer the phone right on schedule for the interview. The voice on the other end says, “Hi, this is [one of your best friends] calling on behalf of [fruit company hiring manager]. She asked me to cover the interview because something came up, and she couldn’t make it.”

The interview went well. The next step is to schedule a face-to-face interview with the hiring manager. Let’s hope that comes off well, too.

Grateful Monday

Once again, I am grateful for good, supportive friends.

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Shaking Hands with Mr. Stripey

Suna stands in front of Mr. Stripey

It’s funny how a small thing can lead seamlessly to a big thing.

Mr. Stripey has put out lots of wonderful foliage. (BTW, he is taller than she is, even when she stands at the same level.) He has even put out a few of those ugly yellow flowers, but so far, no fruit! I have begun to wonder if Mr. Stripey is shaking hands with Mr. Happy. I had always thought that was OK for tomatoes. Can’t they self-pollinate?

Well, just in case they can’t, Suna and I went shopping for a friend. We bought another variety of tomato, a pretty John Fannick phlox, and a trio of rose bushes. These are the first roses for this address. Of course, we don’t have any place to plant them.

So I took out a chunk of my original front flowerbed. I’m going to run it down the side of the house in a nice windy meander. And you know what? July is a freeking hot time of year to do that!