Summertime and it's Hot as .... well, you know

We had our first days of 100+ degree heat this past weekend. It's only June! What will the rest of the summer be like?

Going back a bit, we spent Memorial Day weekend finally getting some plants into the ground. We decided to follow at least some of the recommendations made by the square foot gardening people, but not quite all of them. We built boxes so that our plants would be above-ground and followed their recommendations on size. Most are 4'x4', but we also have one along the side of the house that is 8'x2'.

Next, we cleared out the weeds and other plants that were in the boxes and lined them with weed fabric. Then we mixed up compost, vermiculite, and peat moss and filled the boxes.

Up to this point, we were right in line with the principles of Square Foot Gardening. But that's about as far as we went. Instead of putting in grids to divide each box into one-foot square areas, we bought some plants (not seeds, also suggested by the purists).

And we put them in the boxes, giving each plant more or less the square footage recommended by the book.

The boxes in the front have zucchini and yellow squash planted in them. The ones further back now have tomatoes, cucumbers, cantelope, basil, and catnip. Around the side of the house (the long box and square box seen above), we have more tomatoes and basil, more squashes, and some onions. And in that box shown in the first picture, we planted pumpkin and yet more squash.

We've already had to replace one tomato plant that was dug up by a dog the other day, but everything else seems to be doing okay. In a few weeks, I hope to have more excitement on the garden front. For right now, I'm just relieved to finally have planted something.

Sophie continues to settle in. It took her a while, but she finally found herself a bed that is large enough for her personality.

She was not quite prepared for what happened next. Future Vet had been looking for opportunities to work with animals this summer. He has a couple of irons in the fire, but the first opportunity to present itself was fostering kittens for the city shelters, who are overrun with kittens at this time of year.

Tomorrow .... more kittens!