Death Star and Dragon's Egg

Since our heat wave is making international news, I'll keep giving you my day-to-day temperature report. Right now, just after 6 a.m., it's only 63º F (17º C), so it's pretty comfortable. But by 5 p.m. we'll be in the high 90's, not quite to 100º F -- and then even hotter tomorrow. Or so the forecasters say.

I've just finished hauling a pair of old lawn mowers through the house. Talk about things I never imagined having to do! We're getting rid of them, but they're so big I couldn't take them down the side return and squeeze them through the narrow gap between our garden shed and Mrs. K's fence. They had to come through the house. At least I could carry them rather than having to roll them across the floor.

I've set them out at the street, and they're supposed to be collected by the council later today. I've tried for weeks to offload them on Freecycle but there were no takers, surprisingly.

Yesterday was very quiet. I fixed one of our lawn chairs, which Dave broke during our dinner party on Saturday evening. (They're somewhat creaky chairs and if a sitter moves wrong on uneven ground, all bets are off. We use the creaky chairs and put our guests in sturdier ones.) Several of the joints popped apart but they were easily re-glued with the tail end of my tube of Super Glue and they seem to be holding. And I even managed to make the repair WITHOUT GETTING SUPER GLUE ON MY HANDS! It's a freakin' miracle.

Speaking of our dinner, some of you asked about Dave's culinary skills and training. He has indeed been professionally trained -- he completed a yearlong course at the French Culinary Institute in Manhattan right before we met in 2009. Hence the fancy menu. (If I were cooking we'd have been eating tuna fish sandwiches.)

Otherwise I sat outside and read. Today's photos are just a look at what's blooming in the garden at the moment. Above, a variety of campanula that grows of its own accord near our back steps.

Our globe thistles have started to bloom as well. This one looks a bit like the Death Star, floating through intergalactic clouds of yellow ragwort.

Gazoinks! It's a gazania! I bought two gazania plants this year and both of them are this white variety. They're fine, but I wish I had at least one yellow one.

Here's the dahlia that appeared from the bud I photographed about a week ago -- the one Linda Sue memorably likened to a dragon's egg.

Our penstemon is blooming. This is a tough plant that we though had died several years ago. It keeps bouncing back, if not exactly flourishing.

Some of our garden phlox. We have at least one more phlox plant but it didn't produce flowers this year.

And finally, this orchid just opened indoors -- on a plant I rescued from a baking windowsill at school just before our first lockdowns in 2020. We'd never seen it bloom so I didn't know what to expect. I think it's identical to another of our rescued orchids that I pulled from someone's trash. We've now seen all of our orchids in flower. There are no more mysteries!