Hummingbirds, etc.

This plant has nothing to do with hummingbirds. It's a sedum called "Dragon's Blood." I love both the name and the plant. The plant is hardy. Extremely hardy. Psychotically hardy. We had record setting -40 degree temps last winter and this spring it never looked better. This is a little baby clump. The mother clump is in another flower bed. This is part of my "finding good plants to grow in hot dry places" campaign for the flower bed by the patio. Stay tuned.

Okay, on to the hummingbirds. Which aren't pictured here. Don't strain your eyes trying to find one. A few years ago, we were besieged with hummingbirds. Worse things could happen, I suppose. They were fun to watch, once your heart recovered from something the size of a very large bumblebee dive bombing your head when you stepped out the back door.

So the next summer, I put out a hummingbird feeder, kept it filled, clean etc. The only things it attracted were ants and bees and it leaked sugary glop on the ground underneath, which attracted more ants and bees. Go figure.

Last summer, no feeder. A few hummingbirds flitted through and seemed to enjoy the flowers on the patio, so this summer, my hummingbird-enticing approach is totally floral. 

This plant is called lantana. It is supposed to attract hummingbirds. If I were a good gardener, I could tell you what variety it is. But in addition to not necessarily being a good gardener, I am also a very forgetful gardener and don't have a clue.

But it's darn pretty. Even if it doesn't attract hummingbirds, it's still darn pretty. 

The Farmer borrowed the neighbor's skid loader and hauled in some dirt to level off the cistern (again). Now my Sweet 100 tomatoes have somewhere to call home. This is the extent of my vegetable gardening: two tomato plants sitting on top of the old cistern. A couple of years I've planted them directly in the ground, no pots, but that always gave me huge plants without a lot of tomatoes. I get a better yield by putting them in pots. And it's a little harder for the dogs to help themselves that way. A LITTLE harder, not impossible. Trust me. Ask Connor. He is a tomato-picking fiend.

I can already taste them, fresh off the vine, in pasta salad with a garlic and oil dressing, mixed with cucumbers and ranch dressing . . . oh, yikes, now I've gone and drooled all over the keyboard.