Between the weeds and the lack of rain it is difficult to keep a positive attitude. How do weeds get so huge with nary a sip of water. I have a hoophouse that I use all winter to grow lettuce, spinach, kale and collards. I let it completely dry up all summer. No matter! The weeds grew up to my shoulders anyway.

Both hosta and sedum are excellent drought resistant perennials. Their fleshy leaves hold quite a bit of moisture. Astilbes, not so much. Most of mine needed to be cut right to the ground. They were completely brown and crispy. Hope springs eternal, however. I think they will come back next spring. Nature is so forgiving.

I have been admiring the house on the left at the bottom of Edgartown Road. There are several good looking, hanging baskets on the wrap around porch.

Every day the homeowners bring them all onto the lawn on tables and stools to get a proper soaking and a daily dose of sunshine. I admire and am jealous of the time commitment.

I purchased a few crepe myrtle bushes. They are so spectacular right now and I am willing to plant and wait a few years for my new ones to come along.

There are a few on Clevelandtown Road that are show-stoppers. Two pinks and a white. They are at least 15 feet tall. They are on the right hand side soon after the turn from the Katama Road.

One of my favorite annuals is amaranth. The cultivar love-lies-bleeding is striking. It is an ancient grain crop that goes back to the Aztecs. It is a bright maroon in flower and can grow quite tall. It reseeds reliably all over the place and birds love it. Lately, I have noticed that it seems to cross-pollinate with its plain green wild cousin. The resulting “super” weed is a pale pink and can easily get over 10 feet tall. There are several in the flower garden in front of Ghost Island Farm. Check them out.

Violet and I have been following the earthquake news out of Italy. We visited there this spring with the charter school eighth grade. While we did not go to that town, we were in several smaller ones. It is so sad, both the loss of life and the destruction of buildings and streets, hundreds of years old.

My garden is loaded with monarch butterflies. I cannot remember a year with so many. I have quite a bit of milkweed that I left along the edges but have yet to see any caterpillars. It should be soon, however. I would think they need to complete another life cycle before that long trip south.

It is curious to me that there is so much concern about the Clinton Foundation. A charity watch official was interviewed on NPR and said an exhaustive search found no improprieties on the part of the Clintons. No matter. Everything the Clintons do is suspect and has been for decades, regardless of the facts. I do not remember any such coverage of Dick Cheney and his ties to Halliburton. In fact, Halliburton got some nice juicy contracts in Iraq.

I inherited some Halliburton stock from my parents. I promptly sold it and turned it into solar panels on my house. Seemed only fitting.