I finally mowed my front lawn - it really needed it - and I finally put all of the dishes from the sink into the dishwasher to run. This week I just couldn't make myself wash dishes by hand, so I suppose my brain was telling me to run the machine for this month.

We're in the low 100s now every day. But the air is dryer, so it is actually easier to put in short spurts of work in 103^o weather than it is in 90^o weather with high humidity. And I think it has reach that time of summer for evening showers on the patio now the city water is so warm through the tap.

I picked up several things more to put on eBay. Something to do this evening, perhaps. My garden isn't producing much now, but this afternoon I mouse-proofed a bit and put gobs of dog hair (bagged after brushing the pooches) into the peppers, eggplant, and sweet potato beds, and then followed behind with a homemade mix called "garlic pepper tea." I added a little orange oil to the mix because I read the ingredients of a "mole scram" product, and garlic and orange oil are two of them. I don't have castor bean (just as well) but I do have orange oil. Put a couple of bulb's worth of garlic and a couple of jalapeno peppers into a blender with a couple of cups of water and make a slurry. Pour through a sieve to remove solids, and I filled the jar up to 1 quart. My organic gardening guru puts this much "tea" into a gallon container and fills that to the top with water, and then uses only 1/4 cup of that per gallon in a sprayer. I don't want to fool with that gallon jug so I'll be careful and use less of this more concentrated mix.

A little bit of this goes a long way, a few teaspoons of it into a pint squirt bottle and I squirted it onto the ground under the garden plants and on the little spot where I noticed rodent digging in the garden wall. Must be careful not to spritz myself with this stuff.