living on the edge...

...of the heat dome the air is unstable and for the second time in three days...

a short-lived line of thunderstorms knocked down some of my maize and teosinte out back...

so i stood it back up ( again )...

this particular maize plant...

has a damaged stalk so , rather than risk snapping it off, i left it lay...if it succeeds in producing ears it will do so in a prone position...

a tenth of an inch of rain may seem like little for the work...however i am not carping...there is drought out west...along with some flooding...one wonders when the deniers will see the pattern...and while we are talking patterns...

the jerusalem artichokes were unimpressed by wind and rain and have reached between six and eight feet in height...

they are also blooming...which struck me as being a bit early...so i ahd a look at the past...last season i fond blooms on august third...in 2019 on august sixth...and in 2018 on august eighth...while those blooms may have appeared before i noticed it would have only been by a day...i am a regular, daily vistior to the back yard...i have spent the past ten years or so trying to become native to it and understand what i could...and what i understand is july twenty-ninth is somewhat earlier than sometime in august...even though it fits the pattern of earlier bloming that has been going on for the past few seasons...and not the first marker i have noticed this year...the new york import strawberries were blooming noticably earlier too...

in other back yard news, the pole beans...which, at one point, i thought had bolted, are blooming and producing more vigorously...

i saw a cardinal ( one of three pairs that hang around here ) in the black chestnut...

a butterfly feeding on a very orange flower...

and the first dragonfly i have seen in a couple of weeks...my wander out into the yard with a camera this afternoon seems to have been well timed.