Officially Summer

Since we are in the middle of a heatwave and the kiddo woke up much too early due to excessive sun in his room (the curtains were open to let in the night breeze since it was HOT in our house), it is obviously SUMMER! Here are some other clues:Extremely wilted swiss chard. (Luckily, it perks back up in the evening.) JT and I both felt like this yesterday while running errands.

Our grass is only green where there is constant shade and the figs are falling like rain! I wish that they were yummy and ripe - there are so many fig things we could have made - fig preserves, fig and caramelized onion pizzas, fig cookies, um... But the fig tree must be a a calimyrna fig, which needs a tiny wasp to fertilize the figs so that they ripen. If anyone knows where (and when) I can buy a bag of these wasps for my tree, let me know so that next year we can enjoy the figs rather than pick up 1 1/2 buckets PER DAY. (Or maybe I have a caprifig tree? In that case, they will never ripen, but at least they are not wasp-laden...)Our giant sunflower opened! Oddly, it grew in the side yard, which is planted mostly with low-water succulents, marigolds and cactus plants, and thus hardly ever gets watered. I think those Spring rains were just enough to get it going. The stalk is as big around as my forearm. (By the way, this picture was taken sometime after 8 pm and the sky was a weird whitish color. We took a walk to the playground to cool off.)I couldn't resist these baby toes and living rocks at Lowe's. I am in a succulent mode, having successfully grown offspring of our many jade plants. At least that is one plant that I haven't killed (yet).And of course we have to eat lots of cool treats. Acai ice cream or sorbet or whatever from Robeks is the current favorite! I am sure grandma and grandpa would like it, too!