Spring's gentle charms have evaporated into summer's determined heat. The mornings have an urgent warmth that presses the garden on to business, growing while the sun is bright and the temperatures spur growth rates to higher levels. I notice it too as I go out to get the paper, the heat and humidity warning that I had better tend to the plants while it is still tolerable and then get the hose running if there hasn't been enough rain.

The tomato plants have turned into a jungle studded with green fruit among the spangles of golden flowers, growing visibly larger each day. The biggest fruits have taken on a promising shine though they still haven't developed a blush of ripening color. The summer squash have their own little jungle beside them nestled in the horseshoe of orange and red daylilies, thrusting silver spotted leaves high in the air above their yellow lily-like flowers. They're not about to let the ornamentals entirely rule the show of color from the garden.

The pink roses bloomed with big clusters of fragrant flowers, shaming the red roses which have made only a few blooms. The altheas and hydrangeas are also flaunting their blooms, and the crepe myrtles have finally joined the show. The summer bloomers have definitely grabbed center stage.

While the plants (and weeds) grow rapidly in the sunshine, I spend more time shredding paper and putting it on the garden along with some fertilizer to help it break down. Most of the garden is following its usual pattern of early spring growth followed by tough weeds followed by barren patches in the worst areas where even the weeds cannot survive. Mom followed a pattern of weeding and then throwing out the weeds for so long that large areas of the garden are heavy worn-out clay so typical of land here that loses fertility if cropped hard but not fed manure or other organic material.

I still have some greens, beans, and broccoli in the garden areas which got compost and mulch last year, but the rest of the plantings are giving up no matter how carefully I mulch and water them. I put the most time-consuming but productive plants like the tomatoes in the best areas and tried for other crops in the adjacent areas which had gotten some compost last year. The areas which got none grew a few plants which choked off when the weather warmed and the soil turned into a brick again.

It is both encouraging and discouraging to watch the difference that feeding the soil makes. Rapunzel and Baby both have loads of compost finishing now and they'll go onto the garden soon. However, even that won't be enough to feed even this small a garden against the soil-destroying heat that burns out the organic material in a hurry. The clay particles survive the heat and eventually turn the soil back to that light tan that warns that nothing much will come of planting even the best seeds without more organic material to lighten and nourish the soil. Even the earthworms depart for better homes, only now becoming more apparent in the composted areas.

So, no matter how messy it looks, I'm shredding paper and putting it out to sheet compost on the surface. I just can't afford the amounts of peat moss and straw that would help to loosen the soil. I'm even looking forward to the junk mail and neighborhood newspapers for compostable material. If spam only came on newspaper I'd be set for life given the organic content of so many messages. Unfortunately, it doesn't even have even that much redeeming value as the junk mail sometimes does.

The heat isn't slowing down the mockingbirds in their aerial attacks on the cats. Their babies are now sturdy adolescents trying their wings and learning about cats. The parents are fiercely driving the cats to shelter whenever they see furry forms emerging into the light. They are looking a bit tattered from their exertions and quite ready for their summer vacation when the babies finally leave on their own.

The cats are mostly relaxing in the shade and enjoying the warm weather. They can stay out at night and hunt bugs to their hearts' content under the streetlights. Mischief has taken over the terrace, snoozing on the swing cushions early in the day and moving to a cooler garden chair later when the sun shifts onto the swing. He sometimes deigns to sleep on my bed if I've been out shopping earlier and he feels abandoned, but the garden eventually lures him back outside.

Rascal has his hidey holes under the shrubs for now, but I've been pruning a few back. I discovered him there yesterday when I worked on the shrubs near the gas meter. I heard a rustling sound and backed away warily, nervous about the possibility of a poisonous snake in the undergrowth. The weatherman got upstaged by an urgent warning about poisonous snakes in the area during a recent newscast but rallied to inform us about how the warm weather was contributing to the peril, so I was watching for snakes in the overgrown hedges given that we've seen quite a few snakes in the past few years.

As I carefully pulled back a branch to see what was making the noise, the gold eyes peering at me exploded in a blur of black fur and seized my hand. Rascal was quite pleased at capturing his prey, so I tickled his stomach as he snapped at my gardening glove. At least he's not poisonous even if he is well-armed with fangs.

Mischief's fangs are a bit more dangerous to my craft projects. He has been attacking the patchwork vest lately, quite tired of it getting more attention than he does. I decided not to put a corrugated ribbing on it after reading that they tended to curl from the yarn strands behind the purled stitches keeping the purl stitches from properly drawing back behind the knit stitches.

I read a webpage that said that a knit 2-purl 3 corrugated ribbing would not curl like the usual knit 2-purl 2 ribbing, but by then I was quite annoyed at trying to figure out how I might knit the ribbing with woven strands instead of leaving them loose behind the work. I put on a plain knit 2-purl 2 ribbing with the left-over yarn in rainbow bands of pastel color. Now I'm working on the ribbing along the front opening in dark brown to make a button band.