Still holding steady, flowers and butterflies!

 Had errands to do so got to the garden a bit earlier but it was still hot by that time so before leaving we closed up at 11:15 and glad we did. It's only 87 now at 2:45 but that is still too darn close to 90 for us. Going to drop to the low 60's at night. Yeehaw!

Sunflower last night and this morning. I was able to show the picture to my little friend to show her it was happy and healthy. Turns out that her mom is allergic go sunflowers so it stays in my garden for the butterflies and bees to enjoy.

 

And speaking of butterflies.. very hard to get a picture of a Gulf Fritillary butterfly on the lantana downstairs. My sweetie came upstairs after getting the mail yesterday and said there was a 'huge brown butterfly that almost attacked him!' he spread his arms wide and then indicated with his fingers how big it actually was. Silly man. I couldn't figure out what sort of butterfly it could be then when we saw this one today I pointed to it and asked if that's the butterfly and he said yes and I told him what it was. The zinnias are growing, just every so slowly, one is taller than the others and if I get flowers before October I'll be lucky.

 

The growth in the leaf axils are more leaves/branches it looks like. There are also a few tendrils now sprouted on the bushes. That is going to be one incredibly crowded corner in a month! So exciting to see so many tomatoes and hopefully some cucumbers. I grew one cucumber in the south bed last year, just trained it up a stake and it put out flowers but no fruit. Hoping for better results this year with better soil and weather. 

It's got to be something in the soil. That bush is falling over, the leaves are curling and I barely water it. I pulled about three more bottom rotted tomatoes of that bush and the one in the north bed. Still debating on giving Dolores that bed after all. If I figure out how to get pots and where to put them I'll give that over to her. She has so many things in pots right now though which reminds me.

Not a good picture but her cherry tomatoes lost almost all the flowers and she said that it was likely from when she was growing it over at her daughters in too much shade. I agreed with that and she hopes it does better there. Kind of sad to see full stems of what should be little cherry tomatoes and they're all empty except for three or four flowers at the tips.

Not much else happening in the garden today. Need to go fix a tomato/cucumber/onion salad for the summer bbq downstairs in an hour. Lord knows I have enough tomatoes.