Expanding on yesterday's privet remark: in the second week of September comes my street's quarterly bulky waste pickup. I need to head to the back of the back yard (beyond the fence) and cut down the privet that are there and start dragging them to the front of the yard. For a while they'll sit beside the garage because the code enforcement folks don't want bulky stuff at the curb too early. I'll use the battery powered Ryobi reciprocating saw and a couple of sharp lopper hand tools.

This should clear out space for some of the better species of trees that have sprouted (oaks and pecans planted by squirrels).

I'm going to be processing more pickled okra and blanching tomatoes to dice and freeze today. The season will shift soon, I'm trying to keep up with what is here now. I gave away a half-dozen or more tomatoes yesterday (slicers good for BLT sandwiches). I also headed out to the garden with a mix of compost tea and spinosad in water to spritz on the various stinkbug varieties trying to take over. If I can hit the nymphs they are more likely to die from the spinosad; I need to take out the flyswatter and clobber the adults that are in view. Another trick is to take out a hand-vac and suck them off of plants.

We're still in the heat of summer, but there are cracks around the edges now. The quality of the light in the morning is different than it was in June; the trees are starting to drop leaves after a hot season, not the usual fall drop that happens here usually in November, but the reaction to heat that some of the trees have. The garden plantings are now huge and sprawling, but there are dried parts of the oldest part of the tomato plants, the okra is huge, and the native sunflowers around the edges are starting to drop limbs as the seed heads gain weight. They're not big seeds like the ones you buy at the store, but the shape is the same on a much smaller scale. I'll be dragging those to the back yard to toss under the area where I'll cut down privet. They can break down back there, seeds wash into the creek and downstream to sprout along the Trinity River banks. My canning shelves are full to overflowing (I'll be moving things on the next shelf up to make room for more pint jar cases) and it has been a satisfactory growing season. I have lots of canned goods to share with friends and neighbors.