Out in the yard again this morning just briefly, mostly pulling weeds. Necessary but evil! Also deadheaded a few of my gazanias, harvested some dried gazania seed that I’d yanked off several days ago, and transplanted some pinks to a different pot.

Speaking of those pinks, I never expected them to be so hardy. We bought them before we even bought our house, and brought them over here. They wintered outside just fine (I remember looking at snow covering the pot), to my surprise, and even I think grew some more greenery during the winter. Then this summer, I had period where I was basically not good for much — I was really sick with the flu for about a week and a half, and immediately after that I fell down the stairs and twisted my ankle so I couldn’t move around much. My potted plants especially suffered and the pinks had died, they looked like they were goners. But I watered anyway and about a week ago I saw some green starting to poke up out of the dead stems. Then yesterday I noticed a bloom! Can’t believe it came back, but am glad it did.

Also noticed about four or five little tomatoes growing on my “mystery yellow” tomato plant, so I’m hoping those will have time to make before the frosts hit!

This past week I’ve been watching the temperature closely and it’s been a steady about 78 degrees by 10 a.m. Today at 10 a.m. it’s about 75, and when I first went out at 9 it was about 71. It rained last night so I’m sure that’s part of it, but in any case I do think the weather is changing a little here in the Washington, D.C. area.