Late Summer afternoon

SO...check out the amazing grasshopper-dude. He was hanging out in a clump of weeds in the herb beds. I ran inside to get the camera...because I had to shoo him away...because I was weeding, and well...Actually he is much, much bigger than it may appear here. I'd sayhe was about three inches long. And check out those eyes! what an incredible expression! very elegant. I had been cooped up all day, and finally just got the garden gloves and a sweat rag (important piece of equipment, the sweat rag) stuffed into my pocket, and some clippers and just headed out. I felt like taking something apart - I thought I'd cut back at least one row of basil. Easy enough, and gratifyng. But there are SO MANY BEES. The big fat bumble bees. They're not aggressive, but they do not like to be disturbed, and they are very vocal about it. I wasn't sure whether they'd go home later in the evening and leave the basil to me, or whether it's late summer and they'd just hang around 24/7. They do that sometimes. They crawl onto the back side of a leaf (or flower) and just act totally drunk. Hanging on, bleary with pollen, and oblivious to everything, including you. If you grab a flower or leaf and aren't inspecting what you're doing, you're likely to just grab a very large bee into the middle of your palm. Not a good move. I've done that. In the end, I decided to leave them alone. As you can see, there are more basil flowers than there is actual basil. Cut back severely, there will be a fall crop. I can either do that, or pull it all up and just plant more. But it's kind of beautiful and there's plenty of basil to go around. I'll probably leave some and prune some. Spring is plenty of time for brand new basil, I think. So I pulled many giant weeds and threw them out to the edge of the garden, then carefully weeded my new bed of French Marigolds. They're not the showiest game in town, but I wanted some color...besides they're edible, even though Will can't understand why anyone would want to eat one, because he's not fond of the taste. In any case, they're dependable, and once they get going, will bloom until we have a frost. So that was fun. At least one new fresh-looking row at the edge of the herb garden. It gives one courage to wade into the rest of it and hack away, trying to restore some kind of order. The heat has lost it's scary power somehow, or maybe we're just more used to it in late August and we don't care so much. But it is becoming a little easier to work outside...maybe more garden news tomorrow.