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Its not exactly winter but we have had a cold front. Yesterday we hit a high of 80 degrees. Last night we hit a low of 42. Today we hit a high of 61, and it should cool down again tonight. The next few days should bring temperatures in the 60’s to the mid 70’s.

Not winter, but kind of autumn. We’ll see how this new weather change plays out. And yes my garden does still have tomatoes, thank you.

How crazy is it you ask? Well we are in the high 80’s, my tomato plants, that that are alive, are producing nicely. Still picking fresh tomatoes. My tomatillos are producing, and since we had half an inch of rain this week, my potato plants are growing. Last week we had about a third of an inch of rain with fairly warm weather. We have had a few days of cool weather, but overall the past week has been warm. Strange weather.

I’m sure winter will show up, but right now its anybodies guess when and how it will happen. The forecast says by mid next week, well into November, we should cool down to mid 60s, about a 15 degree drop from current temperatures. We’ll see.

Yes, we are picking some wonderful cantaloupes and watermelons, in October!! They were ripe sweet and delicious.

Life is working in strange ways. The weather has been warm, high 80’s to low 90’s. The nights are warm but not too warm. The nights are still in the 70’s. We’re supposed to get a cool down, we’ll see.

We truly have a second season here in this area. And we’re getting it now.

Part of the fun will be our new additions. We just adopted two new dogs. They’re Morkies – Maltese and Yorkshire terrier mix. They are little brothers, and about 5 years old. We got them from a dog rescue. They don’t seem to be in to tearing up the yard. We just brought them home yesterday. Unfortunately, today I took a fall trying to get over the makeshift doggie fencing inside. I don’t think I broke anything, I landed on both knees and both hands. But I’m sore all over and won’t be up to doing much for a few days at least. In addition I’ve been sick with some sort of cold or flu. I’ve been coughing and sick for three weeks. So taking a fall was not helpful for my health.

But luckily plants grow regardless of how I feel.

It looks like fall is trying to make its way into Austin. It may not seem like much but the nights are getting down into the 60’s, albeit the high 60’s but that’s better than it was. Even the days are a bit cooler – high 80’s to low 90’s. No triple digits right now and that is nice.

Its still humid after all the rain we got, but that’s to be expected. That’s not the say I enjoy it, but with all the rain we had any heat will make it humid. But at least most of the plants seem to be doing well. That rain got everything nicely watered. And its been more a light breeze than any real wind. So Austin has a chance to recover a bit from the storms. I’ve noticed some trees and limbs down in the area, so tree services will be kept busy.

One other recent problem that seems to be occurring since Hurricane Harvey – run on gas. A friend warned me that lines were long and that some gas stations were running out of gas. I didn’t quite believe them. But just to be on the safe side, and since its Labor Day weekend and I only had half a tank of gas, I went to fill up. Well they weren’t kidding. The lines were 3-4 deep with vehicles when I got there. By the time I had finished pumping my gas the lines were even longer. And to make it work, gas prices had gone up by around 40-50 cents a gallon. Not great, but I have gas and nowhere to go this weekend. I did my grocery shopping so I can just stay home this weekend and cook and relax.

We started Monday, August 21 with an eclipse. I wasn’t here, I had to go out of town so I don’t know how much of it was visible from home. But by Friday evening our area, and south of us, was in hurricane survival mode. Hurricane Harvey landed in Rockport, TX on Friday night. Even here in Austin we are feeling the effects. Yesterday, Saturday we had 4 inches of rain. Today, Sunday we’ve already had over 2 inches and we are still getting a slow steady light rain. Last week we had a high of 94 degrees and yet today it has barely made it to 72. At 5:30 pm we sit at 69.

Harvey is large enough (landed as a category 4 hurricane) that even parts of Louisiana are getting rain. And at this point, Houston is practically underwater.  What a difference a week makes.

A slow steady light rain may not seem like much, but the ground is now saturated. And they expect rain for many more days to come. Flooding is happening in many areas. Here where we live we’re actually okay since we are on a slight hill. The water still drains down hill, so we’re okay. That’s not to say the roads below us are in great shape with no flooding, its just to say that where we are is draining.

But its still warm enough that plants outside are green. I fear grass, weeds, and who knows what else will become a problem in the coming weeks.

Its been nothing but a hot summer. We have been in the high 90’s here at the house. Austin itself has been triple digits. Heat index has been triple digits even here at the house. Not my favorite weather.

I planted seed, salad, lettuce, squash, and some other things. With the heat they are coming up, but its taking lots of water to keep them alive. Such is life in Texas during the summer.

Finally. After weeks of threatening/promising/teasing us, we got rain. As in 1.8 inches in a fairly short period. Well lets say we got 1.7 inches quickly then the rest of it took all day. But we got rain nonetheless. And we needed it. Just in the couple of days since it rained trees are looking better, leaves are greener, weeds are growing, the ground and seeds are responding. It was good to get the rain.

I’ve also replanted some seed. Since the squash plants didn’t do so well, they died but looked like they had been eaten at ground level, I planted more squash seeds. I also put in some broccoli, salad, lettuce, kale, and our beloved beets. With the few days of cooler temperatures the squash and salad/lettuce seeds are already coming up. Since we’re still early August I think we have time for both sets of seeds to produce crops before winter sets in. At least I hope so.

Other than that Pat and I had some interesting gardening challenges. We found that DH had put water pressure restrictions on some of the valves. Unfortunately it meant that quite a few plants were not getting enough water. So Pat changed a lot of watering heads. The plants have been happier. But these are some of what we’ve been checking out. We also found out that some plants were not getting water at all. The valves were closed. Because of the way DH had set these up, we did know until we actually attempted to water and checked the heads. That’s how we found out some plants had not been getting water all year. No wonder we have had unhappy plants! But all is doing better and the plants are happier.

But now we’ll need to begin looking at what to do for next winter. It will come, even if we have a few months to go. Time passes quickly and we need to start preparing for it. Scary thoughts.

Yes, its over 100 degrees here. If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard from me its because not much is happening in the yard. We’ve been hovering in the high 90’s with the nights barely lowering to the mid 70’s, and the yard is just trying to stay alive. We’ve lost the squash plants, and the peas and bean plants. Its just too hot. But the carrots are staying alive, and the swiss chard is hanging on.

We also realized we had one other funny problem. As you might recall my DS took ill about 9 months ago. We had a friend helping in the yard. For the winter we had closed off water valves so they didn’t freeze. Well we forgot to turn some of them on. We recently spent some time going thru the watering system and finally go everything turned back on. Which was good to do as its been simply hot. So hopefully we won’t lose much of anything. We have had to make some replacements. The soaker hose in the yard died – actually it broke. And some of the water heads need to be replaced. Nothing horrendous to do, but with this heat we need to get it done and quickly. Since August is our hottest month usually, we’re just trying to keep everything alive until we begin cooling down.

Hopefully we’ve managed to do that and in the fall we’ll have more things growing. I’m already thing about what to begin planting for the fall. It can’t come too soon.

I got a new garden toy. I got a smoker/grill, and yes my husband put it together. I had to help as it really is a two person job. Here’s what I got:

I picked it up at Home Depot. Its small, since I don’t cook for large crowds, and it was inexpensive, since its for me to learn. I’m glad I went this way.

Things I’ve learned so far:

• You will go thru more charcoal briquets than you think. I lot more! I did chicken thighs last night and it took me quick a while (over 2 hours) since I didn’t use enough briquets. I added more briquets every 30 minutes, so I went thru a lot of them. Also, its helpful to figure out an easier way to add briquets. I found a small pail that I used to scoop the briquets from the bag into the side box. But it took so long I actually had to finish the thighs inside on the stove. But they still came out well.
• If you get an inexpensive grill/smoker, don’t use wood – use briquets. I put soaked wood chips and that was fine. But I put in some dry wood chips and it wasn’t a good idea. I now have blisters on the paint. My own fault.
• You need to get it hot to begin with. Don’t put briquets in and the meat at the same time. I actually used a chimney started to get the briquets started, put them in the side box, then just added more briquets. I’ve had trouble getting the temperature up to 200. Most of the time I’m cooking at just under that. Which means my food takes that much longer. But the chicken last night was tasty, so I’ll have to learn how to get the smoker hotter.
• The colder it is outside, the cooler the grill seems to be. Maybe I didn’t have enough briquets in the side box, but we had a sudden cold front yesterday, it dropped 20 degrees, and I found as it cooled down outside, so did the smoker. At one point I had the smoker at just barely below 200, but then it dropped down to about 150 degrees. Like I said, I finished the chicken inside. 
• Its helpful to figure out how you’re going to clean it out afterwards. One – with constant briquets it may take a while for it to cool down. Two, you don’t want ash in there if its a windy day. You’ll just end up with ash on your food. Since where I live I get wind, that is something to figure out.

All in all I’m glad I got it. But it will definitely be a learning process. And I’m going to get more briquets next time.

We’ve had rain off and on for the past two weeks. Its been nice. Its been just a couple days of rain last week, and we’ve had rain off and on this week. Here, we’ve had just less than an inch, though other areas have had flash flooding and hail. But the plants love it.

Right now everything is growing well, plants are lush, trees are growing, grass is green, and the four legged lawnmowers, aka deer, are fat and sassy. I bet we’ll have quite a few young ones this year.

Right now in the garden we have pretty much everything coming up well. The only problem we’ve had is bugs eating the collard greens. Other than that the peas are coming up, we’ve been getting asparagus, even the apple trees have apples already. With the warm spring we’ve had I’m not surprised at how things are growing. The concern is how warm will summer be and will it arrive early? We’ll have to wait to find that one out.