Dry, Dry, Dry.

8-14-25 VERMONT: The sunny parts of the yard are getting quite brown from lack of rain. We did have a T-storm yesterday, a lot of wind and distant thunder and lightning, but only a drop of rain, 0.05 inches. That T-storm ended a heat wave of about four days curation that had temps in the nineties. The heat pumps did an excellent job of cooling us. The pond levels continue to drop, but the pond life doesn’t mind. 

Val and Steve have gone, and we are expecting Alan and Nancy tomorrow for a long weekend. 

The monarch caterpillars are gone, but I haven’t seen any chrysalises, but I did see a new monarch today.

New blooms: sedum, blue lobelia, goose-neck loosestrife. 

Sedum is a succulent, so it is drought tolerant. This seems early for it to flower, but it is mid-August.

Goose-neck loosestrife has a bend in the blossom head and a ton of tiny flowers.

Red lobelia, cardinal flower, has a white tipped stigma that deposits pollen on the bee that dives into that tunnel at the center of the three lower petals and the two upper ones in search of nectar. The next flower gets the pollen from the first flower, and on and on.

Blue lobelia looks superficially like the red lobelia, but is a larger flower with a less prominent stigma and a bigger pit for the pollinator.