early hours

I didn't sleep well last night. Tried reading a tough book to get drowsy again, it didn't work. So at five-thirty AM decided might as well do something productive. Went out into the garden when it was just getting light enough to see, and did nearly two hours of work. It was nice, actually- the neighborhood very quiet, the insects not yet pestering, the air nice and cool.

I cut down to three or four inches the yellow collards, making room for new set of tokyo bekana. Plan is that when it gets too cold for the chinese cabbage, I'll quit cutting back the collards and see if they grow back for fall/winter greens. Cut back and composted the garden kale too- it's too hot to eat them and now more light gets to the sweet peas. Cleaned up some yellowing leaves off the swiss chard and sorrel. Leaf beet chard isn't nearly as affected by pests- not sure if this is coincidence (the bugs just found the swiss chard first) or if it's more resistant? Deadheaded the tithonia and some echinacea (in the front corner, where they're visible to passerby). Picked up fallen branches, admired the rose of sharon, cut and washed amaranth greens for dinner tonight. 

Then I gathered up all the bare pots of plants that have died: lentils (no surprise), chervil (natural end of its season), fenugreek (when I doused the kale next to it with soapy water, some of the pests jumped ship onto the fenugreek and ruined it before I noticed). Fuschia had grown back a little this spring but then faltered and died, hellebore seedlings I had potted withered in the heat - I had them in the wrong spot. And one more pot I can't remember what grew in it, now. I dumped them all into empty soil bags, sifted out crockery shards and bits of sticks, and set them wide open in the mini greenhouse. With the idea that heat in there will kill some pathogen or insect eggs/larvae, so I can use the soil again. On days over ninety (we have plenty now) the interior of the shut greenhouse gets far beyond what my thermometer will even register- over one hundred fifty.