Hot and Thirsty

It's been in the mid to upper 90's for a week and we haven't had any real rain in several weeks. It might have been a month since we've had more than just a brief evening thunderstorm. The grass crunches when you walk on it and everything around here looks parched. I've been watering every day and am having a hard time keeping up. The loofa gourds are looking especially thirsty. They got water overnight on Friday and they're already wilted again. I guess they'll get water again this afternoon.

luffa gourds

The grapes are looking pretty good. Even I have a hard time messing up grapes. The vines grow wild like weeds around here and they're hard to kill. Getting grapes from the vines takes a little work since grapes don't really make fruit unless you prune them but that's not too much work. They fruit to produce a second generation if they're in danger so you have to cut them hard enough to really scare them. A grape vine can grow to be 100 ft. long. I cut all of mine to about 6' long. I also cut off all the branches and just leave a few buds to make new branches. This jumble of vines will be just two little branches this winter.

grapes

To get supermarket quality grapes requires a lot of work but all I really need is grapes that are eatable and that's pretty easy.

We've got a volunteer squash of some sort growing in a flower bed around the house. I don't know what it is for sure yet but I'm guessing pumpkin. Maybe we dropped a seed there when making jack-o-lanterns. I don't know where it came from but we're letting it grow. We had to trail it up over the steps to the laundry room to save it from the mower.

volunteer pumpkin?