100 DEGREES IN THE SHADE TODAY

... and it's been that hot for at least two weeks now. I've been doing other things besides blogging lately - gardening, online games, disk golf, etc. But today I went out and took some garden photos.
These are the zinnias I planted around the corner of the laundry 'house'. I love tall, large zinnias. I think they are about my favorite (non-wild) flower.
This is the other side of that corner. Patti-Jo or Carl has another big hole dug there. I had two rows planted, but they've just about eliminated the row nearer the wall with their digging. I try to keep pots or lawn chairs or something put there overnight to deter digging, but sometimes it doesn't help, or I forget.
Although it is turning brown and curling up now, despite all the watering it gets, this tomato plant started early in the season and produced a lot of tomatoes. It is still producing, although at a slower rate, and with smaller tomatoes. I don't remember what variety it is, but I am pretty sure it was just a hybrid of some kind from Walmart. There's also a Chinese Tallow tree coming up in the pot. I need to pull it out while I still can, but thought Mathieu might want to try transplanting it.
This is a German Queen heirloom tomato in a pot on the northeastern corner of the house. It is just now starting to produce, although it was planted within a week of the other tomato plant. The basil that is planted with it, has already gone to seed, as did the other basil plants all around the house. The red you see, is half of a soon to be (I hope) ripe tomato. The tomato has bulging quadrants and two of them are red, while the other two are still green. It looks funny divided exactly in half by color.
This is part of the area on the south side of the house, between the studio and the old gun shop, that I had - still have - covered in black plastic to kill the bermuda grass. I needed to plant pumpkins now if I wanted them for Halloween, so turned one end back a little, even though it was a little early for all the grass to be dead yet. Bermuda grass is almost indestructible. But I got the seeds planted, and they are up now...the ones the dogs didn't dig up with their hole digging. Today, I hope to cover the ground around the pumpkin hills with cardboard to help keep the grass out and preserve some moisture. Moisture is hard to come by here lately. The rest of that area is still covered in the plastic, and will be until Fall.
Then there is the artemesia. I think it is pretty chancey here anyway. Even though this only gets morning sun, it is dead. I am leaving it, and still watering it, in the hope that it may come back from the roots in the fall, but I'm not counting on it.
This honeysuckle went belly up just two days after we got the cattle panel trellis up and put it in the ground. I'm still watering it with a slow drip for long hours every couple of days. And I added cow and horse manure 3 days ago, hoping that might enable it to come back eventually, too.