De-fence-ive Holes

So Saturday morning after we woke up - while Debbi was showering - I went downstairs to turn on the radio and check out the morning. I went to my back window - looking into my patio - and noticed that there was something wrong.

Specifically, most of one of the sections of the fence around my patio had collapsed.

My bet is that the heat did it. The bottom support beam - between two major posts - had sprung away from one post, and taken most of the vertical boards with them. The major beams both still seem pretty solid, so I bet something just warped or expanded in the heat. Possibly there was some rot involved, but it's hard to tell. Anyway, having a hole into my patio is not cool. But it sounds like it should get fixed soon. And it's not like I don't have a door to keep closed or anything valuable on the patio. So, not a big deal.

Plus, I believe the fence is part of the community property, so I won't be stuck paying for it all by myself.

It is strange, though. Like I need another reason to not let the cats onto the patio.

I keep meaning to upload some more photos of my garden, but never get around to it.

The garden's doing quite well, though. The tomato plants are going great guns, and the roma and cherry any, many tomatoes growing on them. None ripe yet, but that'll come. The yellow brandywine plant, however, has generated a number of flowers, but no actual tomatoes growing yet. Maybe it takes longer, or maybe something's wrong. I dunno. It's certainly grown tall enough; it's the only plant whose cage I've had to augment by tying some of its branches to stakes.

The marigolds I planted love the sun and the heat, and are growing and flowering like mad. The two daisy plants behind them seem a little dubious. They're slightly different strains, and one puts up the occasional tall shoots with flowers, which then droop amongst the marigolds. The other one put out dozens of flowers a few weeks ago, but nothing in the last week or so. It's still green, though, so I have hopes.

The pansies are having a rough time. They wilt in the intense heat, but perk up again when I water them. A few of them are not producing any flowers lately, while others are producing quite a few. And they're all growing in odd directions: Some straight up, until they get tall enough that they fall over. Some outwards into open spaces (or not-so-open spaces, like into each others). I'm not sure why some seem more stable than others. So I've been trying to cut them back in places to encourage growth in other directions. They're still quite pretty, but they're not as well-behaved as when I bought them.

The impatiens in the yard, on the other hand, are mostly doing quite well, growing outwards and producing flowers. One or two seem dubious about their new home, but overall they're in good shape. The rose bush, too, seems to be growing again in the wake of being trimmed back since it produced seven bright yellow flowers.

I may buy some more impatiens for the yard, and also some violas to replace the snapdragons along my driveway. The driveway border has soil which is not very deep, so I think something like violas and groundcover will do better there than snappies. Especially since it's only partly sunny there. I also want to add some more flowers to my patio, but the soil there is rather clay-like and I'm not sure what would do the best. Some of the soil I can cultivate and mix in, but other places I don't want to disturb it too much so as not to disrupt the plants already growing in the vicinity.

It's been a lot of fun. But I'm not sure I want to share the plants with the whole world through a whole in my fence.