Well, it is now official. The weatherman somberly intoned that we had one of the driest Septembers in history. We usually get about three inches of rain and got less than half an inch instead. No wonder I've had to run the hose so much. I've got it running even as I write this.

The cats keep coming in covered in dust from rolling in dry corners of the flower beds. I put some flea treatment on them, so hopefully they will stop that. It has been a moderately bad flea season, so I have to keep up with it until frost finally kills off most of them. Once cold weather nails the ones lurking in the great outdoors between trips on furry animals, I just have to watch for the occasional transfer if the boys get into a fight with a flea carrier.

The tomatoes are ripening lots of fruit now. I picked the biggest bag of tomatoes of the season, about seven pounds of mostly red or pink tomatoes and a few yellow ones. The yellow tomatoes are showing their age and are pretty much finished for the season, but the rest are still going strong. The pink ones lagged behind the others but are doing well now.

The roses are still opening the occasional bloom. I gave them a good feeding of compost to encourage them to try for a few weeks longer. The weather is mild enough that there is no risk of frost yet to nip a rose still tender from a late feeding. They are brief sparks of color adding to the continuing bloom from the crepe myrtles.

The new irises arrived this week. We lost the bearded irises to the wet spring last year. They do not like wet feet and rot easily, unlike their swamp iris cousins still thriving by the fence where the runoff rain tends to pool before draining into the front yard and on to the street.

This group is a set of reblooming irises, which are supposed to bloom in early summer and then occasionally into the fall. I got a hardy group in case we have another hard winter, given that we had such a mild late summer and balmy fall weather now. It is already getting chilly at night, and we may need some night heat soon.

If these do well, I had my eye on some beautiful ones that weren't quite as hardy. They're still a little expensive, but the bearded irises are one of my favorite flowers for their exquisite scent. It has such a cool yet intense sweetness that I look forward to their blooms for the aroma itself, the beautiful, graceful petals a bonus for their color and form.

I finished the country rose sweater last weekend. It is based on the pattern Raspberry Pullover in the book "Knit Sweaters the Easy Way." I had to make a few alterations to fit my ample figure, but it turned out pretty well. It is generously studded with bobbles between columns of double (knit 2, purl 2) ribbing.

I was thrilled to get a box of free yarn from Coats & Clark for my Knit for Kids sweaters (formerly Guideposts Sweater Project). This generous company will donate yarn for charity knitting projects. If you participate in such a project, their address is:

Coats and Clark
P.O. Box 12229
Greenville, SC 29612

It takes about two months to get a box and it is one box a year, but it is a huge box of beautiful yarn. It should keep me knitting children's sweaters for months. I don't mind this little surprise for my overloaded organizer a bit, since these sweaters are very handy to pick up between housework tasks and I get a surprising amount of knitting done while resting up for the next burst of activity.