We are into the dog days of summer, though (knock on wood) we have had no stretches of upper 90 's to lower 100's yet. All-in-all it has been a more moderate summer, so far, temperature-wise, than we have had in several years.

It has been pretty dry here since mid to late June, but I am greatful for the adequately wet spring and early summer, after a few years of hard drought and searing temperatures from mid-June on. The past couple of weeks there have been widely scattered showers in the area, and an occasional brief downpour, but mostly high humidity and the unrealized promise of late afternoon or evening showers. The clouds start to pile up, the humidity spikes, there might even be a little wind or lightning in the distance, and then one accepts that a few miles off, it is someone else's turn for a little shower.

I await August with curiosity. I always think of August as a time of peril in the Southern perennial garden.   If I was going to lose plants to heat, humidity, and drought, August is when it was mostly likely to happen.