A summer day in April.

It's still 92 degrees. I feel like the daffodils, dry and crispy.



It's not all bad. The butterfly bushes seem to be growing several inches a day. Finally, I've got butterfly bushes that don't sprawl out across the ground.



While planting some wintersown seedlings in the perennial bed, I pulled some clover to discover Jim's alstroemeria. It's the one with the variegated foliage.



I scattered seeds like a mad man today. I even tossed out some left over potting soil on a bare spot where I walk a lot. Grass seed went over it and I watered it in.



Scattered seeds include Salvia subrotunda, Four O'clocks, lemon basil, cosmos, zinnias, melampodium, and others I can't remember now. It's the heat. Yeah, that's the ticket. I did sow a few more containers. Basil Gonovese, Lemon lime basil, sunflowers (a wide variety from mammoth to red bloomers), Limelight four o'clocks, and a striped four o'clock I have never grown before. It's not as though I don't have enough to plant out already.



I tried to relax in the swing, but after an hour in the hammock, I'm exhausted. The meadow is over a foot tall. Larkspur, red clover, and many weeds make up the majority of the tall seedlings. Rudbeckia and bee balm have been spotted along with a few cosmos around the outer edges. I'm afraid what might be lurking in the middle of all that clover. I bet something that slithers has made itself at home.



I just can't believe how fast everything's growing these days. We haven't had rain in over a week. Thursday, we're supposed to have PM thunderstorms. I hope so. The pollen was so thick at times today, I thought I lived on a dirt road again. All my roses have buds, summer blooming perennials are shooting up flowerstalks, all the crape myrtles are leafing out now, including the white and red ones I started from seed last winter. It's incredible.

After the long winter, I was hoping for a gradual transition into summer. Not a chance of that now. We're running 23 degrees above normal today. As I sit here with the windows open, pollen covering me and everything inside, I can hear the leaves on the trees rustling in the wind. The houses on Brown Avenue are quickly disappearing thanks to the foliage. The stream has dried up. I'm filling the birdbath twice a day. Two crows came in for a drink while I was laying in the hammock the second time.

Maybe on Sunday, things will be cooler and I can plant out more seedlings. They're getting watered twice a day too. Some have succumbed to the heat already. But reseeds will fill the gaps and get moved as spring moves forward. Today, I found a batch of self sown nicotiana and datura. I think every seed that fell has germinated. Lucky too, I was about to have to head downtown to snatch more datura pods. But it's too hot.