Last Sunday afternoon I was in the lower garden, not far from the woods, when I heard Bill calling softly “look left!” So I did, and there not 20 feet away was a young pronghorn buck. I looked at him, he looked at me, then continued mouth-pruning the shrubbery. I said in rather a loud voice ” some nerve!” He looked up again, batted his beautiful eyelashes, went back to eating. Then Bill proceeded down the path toward us, at which point he ambled away.
With luck, he will remain this oblivious until mid-October, when bow-hunting season opens… not that eliminating him will help much. There were three more down behind the compost heap yesterday afternoon.
Other than that, it’s dry. Dry again. Very dry. And up in the 80’s almost every day, which is NOT appropriate for September. On the good side, it certainly separates sheep from goats in the drought resistance department – dahlias are still pumping ‘em out while the cosmos is languishing; summer squash has slowed down but not stopped, and the late lettuce, of all things, is demanding to be thinned right on schedule. Plus even though it still isn’t Sicily, the plum tomatoes are holding on the vine for ages, ripening and then starting to dry out. I KNOW I’ll be courting disaster if I cut large clumps and hang them in the greenhouse, but what the heck? Might as well give it a try.