I wonder when or if we will ever see rain again. I’m so sad for the poor plants, especially the annuals. The perennials will most likely come back next year if they get a little sip soon.

I’m a credit to my Irish ancestors. My onions and potatoes are producing like crazy. This is partly because they do like to dry out mid-August, so their winter keeping ability is optimum. I did get some seeds of beans and carrots into the ground last week. Beans only take60 days and carrots can stay underground for most of the winter. The beans were the bush variety. Pole and/or dried beans take longer so, sadly, the window has closed for them this year.

While continuing to comment about the non-stop watering of garden beds, I had a wonderful experience on Tuesday early morning. A hummingbird started showering in the stream I was creating. I did not dare move for fear of driving it away. Life rarely gets better!

My weedy areas are awash in blooming Queen Anne’s Lace. A member of the carrot family, it could be edible when all hope seems to be lost. I ate one once; it was not wonderful but I didn’t die.

We have a fun project for little children. The cut flower can be placed in water with added food coloring. Overnight, the white blooms take on the color! Last year my daughter in law, Janice Haynes, died. She loved blue. We dyed our hair with blue food coloring for her funeral. She would have loved it. My gray hair did a great job of absorbing the color.

I’m losing patience with Buddleja, also known as Butterfly Bush. It almost immediately requires dead heading. When the task is neglected on a weekly basis, it rapidly loses its charm. Plus, it tends to reseed everywhere. I am becoming more of a fan of Rose of Sharon. A relatively new variety is a nice blue. The only problem is they are becoming deer food of late.

My favorite daylily is just beginning to bloom. Most of the others have seen better days. Steeple Jackie gets five-feet tall scapes with multiple blooms on each stalk. Happily, they are too tall for Bambi and his ilk. The flowers are very fragrant — just when you thought it couldn’t get any better.

I’ve been raising chickens for eggs and meat since the early ‘70s. I use a company in Iowa called Murray McMurray to send me the day-old chicks. They come by way of the U.S. mail. I ordered my year’s supply of meat birds this week. My usual breed, Cornish Game Hen, was sold out. The salesperson told me that an incredible run of sales happened. We guessed that bird flu and maybe Alpha Gal were the reasons. I got a substitute breed, which will be shipped in September. Baby chicks don’t need food or water for a few days after they hatch. I guess it is nature’s way of letting all the eggs hatch before Mom leaves the nest with the new brood.

I was thinking about the lack of empathy exhibited by our President. He was raised very wealthy, never had a “real” job and seemingly never was told no. It would be easy to blame being raised rich, but think back to another well-off President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Between him and my hero, Eleanor, they were extremely concerned about the plight of the less fortunate. August 14 is 90 years since F.D.R. signed Social Security into law. It lifted the elderly out of the poverty experienced during the Depression. Now the Donald and his Republican buddies are doing their best to care for the rich at the expense of the poor.