And the temperature's rising

Sooooo hot.  And no relief in sight.

Hey, Wednesday looks good by comparison.  Although the chance for rain is listed at 50%, and only .2 inch at that. * 

The oriental lilies don't care.  

Double Stargazers

'Casablanca'

Neither do the perennial plants.  They're quite happy.

Lima beans look good.  With little or no rain in sight, however, they may need to be watered before the week is through.

The cucumbers are going strong, and in fact, I managed to get some delicious pickles put up.  Here's the recipe if you want to give it a try:  Copycat Claussen dill pickles

Over on the compost heap, a  squash variety - 'Jarrahdale' pumpkin - is taking over.

In Michoacan, Mexico, where I lived, they used the flowers of squash family plants as food garnishes and cooked in soups and tacos.

I have two plants on the heap, and so far, all I've found is this one pumpkin.

The canteloupe plants are starting to produce.  This is 'Tasty Bites':

The tomatoes, alas, are not faring so well.  It's once again this year too hot for them to set fruit.  The 'Valley Girl' variety I got for its supposed tolerance of temperature extremes seems to be better  off than the other two varieties - 'Missouri Pink Love Apple' and 'German Johnson' - but it's a determinate variety and may already have done all its flowering and fruiting, while the others are indeterminate and still growing and producing.  Or would be producing if it weren't so hot.

All of them have been heavily attacked by tomato hornworms - less 'Missouri Pink' than the other two.  The worms are so hard to spy that inevitably some get by me, and they eat so voraciously that even one left on the plant will denude several branches in a day's time.

Tomato hornworm

Tomato hornworm damage

I wish I had sprayed the plants with Bt a week ago.  It's a forumlation that only kills caterpillars, and it does so by destroying their gut when they feed.  It doesn't instantly kill them, so they will still feed for a while, which is why I usually don't bother - just try to inspect carefully and pick off the offenders.  Obviously this year I missed them too often.

They stripped these cherry tomatoes about halfway down in a couple of days, and I only ever found three of them on the plants.

Although they mainly strip leaves, they also feed on the fruits and spoil the harvest.

This one left for dead was likely infected with a parasite - hooray for natural predation.  But it was of a size that it had probably already accounted for several stripped branches.

As if heat and hornworms weren't enough, something else - I don't know what - has been boring some of the fruit.  

There's a lot of green fruit on the vines (tomatoes only ripen between the temps of 50 and 80 degrees F I've read), but, with the exception of a handful of cherry tomatoes, I have yet to harvest one edible tomato.  And the raccoons have gotten much of the cherry tomato fruits near the bottom of the plants.  

I'll get some someday.  I hope.

Purple yarrow and 'Green Twister' echinacea

Stay safe.  Wear your coronavirus masks.  

UPDATE:  Well, it's Wednesday morning, and we've already gotten 1.6" of rain.  Hooray!  And it's forecast to rain again this afternoon.