First fruit on the Mexican plum
The summer sun circles overhead. Temperatures rise to that evocative number with two circles: 100 degrees. In the garden this morning, more circles abound. The sapling Mexican plum, which this year offers a little shade to the back patio, has produced its first fruit, a small, white plum. I look forward to watching it darken over the next several weeks and wonder if more fruit will appear.

A broken eggshell lies in the mulch beneath the hackberry tree. What bird hatched from this temporary home? It was probably a mourning dove. We see many doves, especially in late afternoon when they visit the container pond for a nervous sip. If they glimpse me watching through the window, they flash the whites of their wings as they spring into the air, making a startling racket with merely the flapping of their wings.

During this hot spell, I’m having to add a couple of inches of water to the container pond every other day. So far this summer, my rain-barrel water has been sufficient, but it’s getting low. Even a brief shower would top off the barrel again. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for rain but may have to resort to my second rain barrel soon, located less conveniently on the other side of the yard.

Borrowed blue circles on the fence—Linda’s morning glories

Zinnia bud, one of the surviving seedlings from a freebie pack of seeds

The scruffy, hot-pink result. If it were red, I’d call it Raggedy Ann.

So much for what’s blooming. Here is what isn’t: my cobalt-blue agapanthus. Usually the three behind my container pond flower all summer, but this year, zilch. Perhaps they need fertilizing, which isn’t really my thing. To be honest, they have never flowered all that well. I love the dark-blue color—I’ve never cared much for the more-common, light-blue agapanthus—but the flowers invariably failed to open all the way, instead spraying out to the side of the seedpod. Not quite the orb of trumpet-shaped flowers one expects with this dependable plant. They always looked great over the top of the pond though, so I may have to give up on these and try another variety.

And here is the bane of my existence. This innocent-looking little plant is a suckering demon from a neighbor’s trash-tree collection next to our driveway. I don’t even know what it is, but I have several choice names for it. It sends suckers all the way under my driveway, even under the garage slab, in order to pop up in my perennial beds, where it rears its ugly head from a thick, snaky root that stretches all the way to China. There is no eradicating it. I simply do battle whenever it appears by spading it as far along the root as I can get or using herbicide on it, which merely knocks it back for a little while. Isn’t it ironic how the plants that grow best, without any help from the gardener, are the ones we despise the most?