Got out later today, dug around.

 The pepper is still holding up but it definitely shows signs of heat stress. I can't toss it at this point, so it will continue to survive. The weather is cooling again thankfully so I got out in the evening and did my walking and visit to the garden.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fall color for San Diego is the Bird of Paradise in bloom. Wonderful vibrant colors on the just opened flowers. They are a tropical, as I've mentioned, so for them this is the time of year to bloom.

The iris in front of the former office is still going strong with a few new leaves, even though it should be cut back by now. Someone is taking care of the whitefly on the leaves it looks like.

And near that iris is a window box with what looks like ginger of some sort. Could be turmeric or actual ginger but then I did some searching for images.

 Comparing the leaves, it's actual ginger. Which is not surprising really but they must use it a lot to want to grow it and bring it with them.

Then there's my garden, where I decided to get some extra exercise and dig in the south bed.

What surprised (and mildly concerned) about digging deep is the sound of roots being pulled. I dug that one up that had a clump of new white roots on it. It could be from the neighbor bed so when I heard the sound I pulled the shovel up and pulled as much out as possible. I even smelled them but nothing of note from the smell. Sometimes you can tell where a root came from by the smell, don't laugh.

Loosened the soil as much as possible with the shovel. As you can see it's quite dark though not very moist, it will be dry as a bone tomorrow but am not going to plant anything in it until I get more amendment. I move a little of what mulch was around the corner to the middle and dug it around as well but that won't be doing anything beneficial for a while.

 

That's what it looked like and if I were to guess it might be from the grass that was growing on her side of the edging. It was on that side and toward the back so that's likely it.

Other than that, still waiting for the weather to cool sufficiently and then for some extra money to come in again for the soil. It felt good to do something in the garden for once, instead of walking in, sighing, planning and walking back out again. I really want to throw some seeds in there but it would end in disappointment and misery.

I am hoping there will not be any signs of gopher activity there. I consulted with a friend after sending her pictures and she said it looked like squirrels but told her no signs of squirrels so she agreed it was likely gopher passage holes (periodic holes in long tunnels for air).

Crossing fingers on that south bed they don't go back there. I smoothed out the dirt so if there's any signs of divots I'll know who made them.

'nuf said.