Here is some humor reading about what happens in the garden. Enjoy!

image from cutdriedflowerfarm.com 

      Good wet morning.  It started to rain around 4:00 PM yesterday Sunday and by 7:30 PM we had 2 ½’ of rain.  IT rained during the night and early this morning, so we ended up with 3 ½” by then.  Greenhouse has water in it, the grass is ponded, and it is wet.  How did you do?  Again, we are a heat advisory out for neat 98F.  With the temperature and the humidity.  After today, it looks like the humidity will be less and it will be more comfortable.  I don’t know about you but with this extreme heat and humidity a person gets tired more easily.  Stay cool, stay safe. 
 
Australia family and friends for Tuesday August 18 will be having frost alerts and sheep grazier warning.  Temperature will be at a low of 35F(2C)  Cold for them. It should warm up to 58F(15C).  Stay warm, stay safe. 
 
 Let’s be honest: gardening can be a spiritual experience. The stillness of the morning, the smell of damp earth, the thrill of spotting that first tomato—these are the moments that restore us. But so too are the moments when the neighbor’s cat uses your raised bed as a litter box, your sunhat gets carried off by the wind mid-hose-spray, or you mistakenly compost your car keys.
Gardening and humor go together like worms and compost—unexpectedly delightful and surprisingly essential for growth.
Sure, we all want perfect rows of carrots and flawless roses, but the truth is, behind every prize-winning garden is a tale of misadventure. Ancient gardeners—probably—told tales of chasing goats out of their lettuce patches. And while we may not have goats, we’ve got groundhogs, squirrels, and an uncanny knack for planting things right before a hailstorm.
I’ve personally learned this: you can dig your way to peace, but you laugh your way to joy.
Take, for instance, the time I transformed my mom’s pristine flowerbed into an accidental pumpkin patch. Those pumpkins grew like they had something to prove, taking over everything from the petunias to the patio furniture. Mom wasn’t thrilled. But years later, she still brings it up—with a smile (and a suspicious tone).
Or the unforgettable “controlled burn” incident, where my dad and I learned that clearing poison ivy with fire is not recommended unless you enjoy explaining your swollen faces to the ER staff. That wasn’t our best moment—but we do make excellent cautionary tales.
And that’s really what this is all about. We gardeners don’t just grow plants. We grow stories. And the best ones are the funny ones—the ones that remind us we’re human, we’re resilient, and we’re always learning (even if it’s the hard way).
These stories will have you laughing through your mulch, grinning between watering sessions, and wiping tears of mirth from your eyes while reading under your favorite garden tree.
From mischievous gnomes to zucchini that stage a garden takeover, this anthology is a love letter to the hilarity that grows alongside the basil and the beets.
Happy laughing, happy digging, and may your compost always be rich (but never mysterious).
 
You Bet Your Garden!  by Mike McGrath 
*How whacked out has YOUR season been? It is early August as I pound these words into my helpless keyboard. We have already endured more – 90 degrees or above – heat waves than ever before, and today’s high is predicted to be 68 degrees. Time to start building that experimental rocket ship if you have an infant son.)
Hostas have two natural enemies: slugs, which love to nibble on their (presumably) tasty leaves, and deer, for whom hostas are a four-star gourmet meal.
The first time I realized that my method of gardening was a gladiator sport occurred one year when I was admiring my food garden (on the other side of the driveway from the hosta farm) in June. (Hint: if your garden doesn’t look good in June, take up woodworking, cause it’s all downhill after that. Nobody schedules a garden tour in August, by which time you have given up and the weeds are beginning to receive mail.)
Anyway, a rogue clump of hostas had set up camp at the front edge of the food garden, right next to a tree stump that also served the birds’ sanitary needs.
But there was something strange about this clump. I was viewing it from the center of the garden, and the big leaves looked fine. Then I went out in front of the clump and saw that what at first appeared to be a big circle of hosta was more like the part of a saloon you see in a Western movie—without the lumber holding up the fake front. As someone once said, ‘There’s no there there.” (Well, somebody must have said it by now. Or maybe it was those monkeys attempting to write Shakespeare.)
I realized that slugs don’t eat that fast—and there were no distinctive slug holes in the remaining leaves. That left deer. Clever deer that had tried to fool me by leaving ten percent of the clump standing! (“He’ll never notice!”)
Thus began my war with the endless stomachs on legs, at one point surrounding the food garden with corrugated steel panels laid flat on the ground because I had been told that deer didn’t like walking on them. Well, neither did I.
Never thought about the front garden, which had lots of bulbs bursting in the Spring—including tulips which are supposedly a favorite food of deer. And voles. And mice. And Evil Squirrels, which not only ate some of my underground bulbs but replaced them with black walnuts, which don’t bloom well in the Spring.
And so it was this Spring: lots of snowdrops, Glory of Snow and crocus; followed by a plethora of daffodils (my favorite bulb because it is bitter tasting and toxic and untouched by any otherwise bulb-eating creature.
And these, of course, are followed by the tulips—and follow they did! Yes, there are fewer of them every Spring, but it’s also been a couple of decades since I planted any new ones, so the sight of these survivors still fills me with joy.
This year’s hostas, however, did not fill me with joy—mostly because there weren’t any. One morning I awoke and noticed something different about the front garden, which I would say was nothing (to see, that is), but there were signs of what was and was yet to be. (Or, more correctly, what would have been to be.)
Despite having no leaves my Pennsylvania Sticks have persisted until Fall (which, as I have already noted, arrived in early August this year). Makes you wonder what Christmas will be like.
But now that the deer have Visted my Hosta, what does next year bring? Theoretically, a perennial that loses all its leaves early in the season will not flower the following year. But does that apply to a perennial whose growth rate puts kudzu to shame?
My money is on the “see you later” translation. It’s the deer I wish I could tell.
Taken from https://foodgardening.mequoda.com/articles/hosta-la-vista/?t=109487
Till next time this is Becky Litterer, Becky’s Greenhouse, Dougherty Iowa [email protected]  641-794-3337  cell 641-903-9365  Beckysgreenhouse.com  Facebook Becky Kerndt Litterer or Becky’s Greenhouse