Dog Days of Summer
What are the Dog Days of Summer? And is the this time of the year that it occurs? Is it when all dogs are tired? I know my dog is. After two and a half months of listening to my two kids bicker and not getting her daily naps, she’s making up for lost time. When they are at school, she’s sacked out on the couch sawing logs.
So…..gardening. Nothing exciting. I haven’t been into it this year. Probably because I haven’t really planted anything new. I dunno. All I can say is that I will never, ever buy any plant that has the word Mexican in it. I love Mexican heather and Mexican petunias, but my God do they take over. Everything and everywhere. Especially the Mexican petunia. What started out as two plants has now turned into two-fitty and growing. I have some stupid ground cover that resembles the petunia and that shit pops up everywhere. I hate it. I may have to rip that out when it gets colder. Unfortunately, freezes haven’t killed it.
Anyway, I pruned back the flowers of Mexican nationality. The bees weren’t too happy about that. They love the heather. I found plants underneath that I didn’t even know I had. Like blue plumbago, which is awesome. I think I even found Jimmy Hoffa under there. I also yanked up the 4 o’clocks. Stupid plant never could tell time anyway. I gave a bunch of of those seeds to my neighbor. She’s gonna hate me in a few months. Heh.
And I don’t know how, because I’ve totally ignored my tomato plant, but it’s flowering again! That doesn’t mean I’ll actually have tomatoes, though. I suck at the tomato growing.
August 20th, 2004 at 9:19 pm
Hey Shelly,
I enjoyed your entry. Just thought I’d throw in my 2 cents about the dog days of summer… hehe.
Sirius is a very bright star known as the dog star. It is in the constellation of “Sirius”, which is O’Rien’s dog. Around this time of year, it is very high in the sky during the day. People believed that the combimed brightness or heat of such a bright star along with the sun contributed to the intense heat of the season. Somehow, this lead to the phrase “dog days of summer”. Pretty neat useless fact I think!
August 21st, 2004 at 8:59 am
Thanks! That is pretty interesting. I was too lazy to look it up! Only here, it’s the Dog Days of Summer 6 months out of the year.
August 23rd, 2004 at 1:59 pm
I need a plant that takes over the whole place, because I’m too lazy to plant more than one time a year. I like them Petunias Mexicanos!
March 25th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
Hey, I was searching on Mexican Petunia and found your blog. I also see you are in Texas. I was wondering if you know of a place to purchase these plants. I currently have a few of the dwarf kind and they don’t take over but I would like a couple of the larger variety.