Yay for clouds and surprises!

 It started out with 'marine layer' clouds until about noon so the day overall is going to be a wonderful temperature and continue that trend for the next week. Yay! Still worked up a sweat out in the garden though.

Picked a good handful of tomatoes and that bush is looking so raggedy, really should cut it down and get the rest of the bed prepped. The cucumber is still doing great, there's two I'm waiting for and two more that just started.

 

First surprise is side buds on the sunflower. I had no clue! Does this mean I need to cut the head off and give those side shoots a chance? Seems kind of silly but worth a shot. That bed looked really dry at one end and the end where the blossom rot tomato was more damp so that tells me something right off.

But watering was done because it was only damp at that end because I used to watering can to keep the soil moist for the cilantro seeds.

 

Not so good surprise; potatoes were rotting in the cupboard so I took the whole bag out to the garden. No room to plant them all but most were sprouting. I dumped them out and, using a glove, picked out the ones that had totally rotted and tossed them in the compost bucket.

Hard to see but I put a marker where I dropped in one of the smaller potatoes in front of the one that's already sprouted. Will see if either of them grow anything by spring. The next surprise is a new faucet. The other one was leaking even more after we got the new hose. Problem was, whoever did it, left the water on full blast. I had to turn it down to almost nothing for it to have the same pressure as before on half open. Wow, what a difference! I suspect it was not only leaking due to a bad seal but the flow was cut down from calcium deposits from forty years of our water. I thought it was just the handle at first but then noticed it was brand new brass as well. Yay!

And the biggest surprise, a mantis on my steps! I didn't see it until I was headed back upstairs with Rocky. My attention is usually on him going down but coming back up he leaps and runs up the stairs and to the door so I take it slower. So glad he was intent on getting home and didn't bother the little fella, not very big, don't think it was more than two inches long. I tried to get it on my finger but I only bothered it enough that it flew off and up into the sycamore.  I wanted to take it to the garden, oh well. It's a good luck symbol and glad to see one in our complex.

And that's it for today love the nice little garden surprises and repaired plumbing. Other flowers are blooming this time of year but nothing spectacular. It's a walking day for me and good weather for it.