Apparently it's too hot for dogs to garden..... but not too hot for sex!

This morning I look despondently outside. It's hot and dry, again. Actually it's been relentless, and the lack of rain is becoming a serious problem. Of course the lawns are brown and dead, and riddled with weeds... not that I really care about them. Lawns can't feed you, after all. But it's all my plants that I'm worried about. I've been catching water in a bucket in the shower, and in the kitchen sink too, as well as watering with town water from the garden hose. (No, I'm not looking forward to the water bill!)

It's actually a bit hard to know what to do for the best at the moment. Weeding is tough as the ground is so dry, but I do still persist. And it's not a great time for planting new things as the drying air is hardly the best start for any new plants.

 A step ladder and the bucket of boiling water at the ready.

So today I decided to re-tackle the Bronze stink bug issue on my lemon tree. Seeing as I've been picking off any young ones from where I can reach, it seems there are now hundreds of adults in the high up branches. This does not bode well. Not only are they hard to reach, but now they freak me out with the possibility of their stinky, stingy chemical being squirted down into my eye or onto my head. I don a wide brimmed hat, a long sleeved shirt, gloves and sunnies. I seem to have misplaced my biohazard suit, otherwise I probably would have gone for that. ;-)

I grab all the ones I can reach, but it seems even with the step ladder they are nearly too high. I look up higher - the branches are riddled with the black bodies, all end to end, having what seems to be a massive bug orgy! It's skin crawling material.  And then I spot two locusts on the job, you know, also rooting. (Well, unless it's mother and daughter, but frankly, I'm suspicious.)  Honestly I wonder where they get the energy in this heat. Aren't they bothered by the fact there's no water?!

Sorry about the bad photo.
You can just see the black bodies between the leaves, having a massive bug orgy.

Shagging locusts in my lemon tree

As I muse, that the lemon tree must be quite the romantic place for bugs, I can hear Special K consistently asking to go inside. He's at the back door, banging on it, for me to let him in. (Earlier he tried digging a cooling hole under the coffee trees, until I stopped him for fear of damaging the roots.) Apparently it's far too hot for gardening today, and he'd much rather be inside under the fan. Quite frankly, I was thinking it wasn't that bad, in my wide brimmed hat with my steely resolve. But now it's clear that I'm wrong.

Under the fan is the place to be. It's just too hot for gardening at the moment.

 So I've taken my direction, and we're inside, out of the sun. Lord Kairos continues to rest on the couch, and I thought I would take this opportunity to make some home made tomato sauce from the huge amount of tomatoes I picked last weekend. I think I will slow roast some for salads too. They are so very red and delicious looking. I reckon they'll make a great sauce.

My inside job of making tomato sauce

I actually had quite a lot of unripe, grass green ones too, that I had from pulling out a tomato plant. I left them on the bench outside, and miraculously they've ripened in the week,  going from looking like they belonged in the compost, to  tantalisingly red. As in many organic gardens, it turns out they are tantalising for the insects too, and a mosquito-ey looking thing has been hanging around, and I suspect laying eggs inside. I noticed that one of the tomatoes had squiggly larvae inside it when I cut one the other day. Not a big fan of larvae in my salad sandwiches, nor in my sauce, although onion and garlic and fresh herbs make everything taste good don't they?!! Just kidding, I'll definitely be cutting them in half for larvae inspection before they make the sauce grade!

Any ideas on my tomato loving insects?

So the kitchen is smelling good, I'm not getting sunburnt, Special K is conserving energy and the bugs are being given some private time (!)  before I head out again, after 4pm, when it's a bit cooler.