Diary of My Country Life-July 9th, 2026

The original source of this blog: https://www.lotusandmichael.com/blogs/diary-of-my-country-life

07/09/2026 Wednesday 68-82F Rain

It’s very easy to spend several hours doing gardening in the yard without knowing it.

For instance: I just planned to sweep the back patio this morning; when I was doing it, I noticed morning-glories popping out in my flower bed here and there; after I cleaned them, I decided to dig up several clusters of hosta since they grew too close to my camellia and since my hands were already dirty; then I pruned the tomato and loofah plants; afterward, I weeded the vegetable bed… It seems that there are always things to be done in the garden especially during the growing season: Water, trim, fertilize, weed; this potted plant likes morning sun but hates hot afternoon sun, therefore it needs to be moved out in the morning and get shaded since noon; the seedlings of basil have grown out several leaves so they should be transplanted to their permanent place soon… Everything looks like little, but is important to the plants—they pout or be happy, all depend on how much you care for them.

Sometimes I think that tending plants is like raising children. Each one has its own characters so it must be managed case by case. Like jasmine sambec—it loves heat and water therefore it should be placed somewhere can receive more sun and be watered often; epiphyllum likes heat too but as it belongs to the cactus family, its demand for water is much less. Otherwise you will drown it (I have learnt the lesson from my mistake 😢).

Though I consider gardening my exercise, doing it in summer has more inconvenience compared to other seasons. To me the number one nuisance is mosquitos. I don’t think there are particularly more mosquitos in my yard since it is dry and tidy, but just several of them are more than I would like to handle. If I want to do something outdoors in early morning or in the evening when the temperature is cooler, no doubt I will be those buzzing little things’ buffet. Yes, I do apply Florida water to my exposed parts like arms and legs, but they still can find places to bite on. And usually, Florida water wakens by sweat which gives mosquitos a perfect chance to binge on me. Once or twice I tried to wear long sleeve top and long pants, though mosquitos couldn’t penetrate the fabrics since they were thick enough, I couldn’t stop sweating.

So now I always wait to do my gardening after ten o’clock in the morning when the dews are dry and sun shines into all the corners. It indeed is hotter but durable, far better than being fully covered under thick garments or bitten by mosquitos. 

Watering is another thing. I tend to water plants in late afternoon like 5:00pm which allows my plants to stay hydrated overnight and this is the last moment before mosquitos resume their activities in open space.

My skin now is very tanned (and can’t be bleached 😂), but I don’t mind at all. 

Ants are another nuisance in my garden basically all year round. They are almost everywhere—on my porch and patios, I often can see little round dirt piled up, the sign of their home. And the size of the dirt pile tells the size of the family hence they need to dig out the dirt for the space so they can fit. Once before I felt quite neutral about them. As long as they didn’t harm me, or eat my plants, or enter my house, I could ignore them. But since I became a home gardener, by chance I learnt that the innocent, diligent image which we used to picture them was wrong, or at least partially wrong—they were pests; they brought or encouraged aphids to grow on the plants.

In spring, when the herbaceous peonies start to form buds, ants appear. People say ants can help peony buds to open, it’s not true. This April I happened to cut off one bud by mistake and put it in a vase, it bloomed one week later without being touched by anything else but my hands. They like the nectar discharged by peony buds, as much as we like honey; they are so crazy and greedy about it that I saw several times they drowned in the sticky nectar—I have no idea whether that way of death (in sweetness) is a blessing or a nightmare to them.

Now my peony flowers are long gone; ants have found their new target: My loofah plants. This morning I saw many of them hurrying along the veins of my largest loofah plant as if they were transporting something emergent. And some gathered at a spent flower, I suppose they found goodies/nectar there as well?

So far, my vegetables have all grown pretty well; I am not sure if it is because of my new compost idea--Since this spring, I started to dig compost holes in my vegetable bed, one hole at a time. The hole is about one foot deep, one and a half feet across, quite compact so it takes us about two to three weeks to fill up the hole with kitchen waste (in our case only vegetables, fruit, eggshells and coffee grounds). Then I use soil to cover the hole and start a new one elsewhere. The soil in my vegetable bed area isn’t great; little rocks often can be found two to three inches beneath the surface. This compost hole idea can directly improve the soil without being too much an eyesore or stinky. And it’s simple and flexible. Sometimes I plant my vegetables right on the compost sites and they love it!

“Everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds”—quote from Voltaire’s Candide.