Darkess at Noon, Working in the Garden.

I didn't have work for the Census Bureau today and I'm on leave from Bass Pro Shops until Sep  17 so I took advantage of this time to work in the garden,  I took all the tomato vines out of one bed (So, yes, we are having fried green tomatoes at supper tonight.), chopped them up and threw them in the compost pile.  Then I dug up the whole bed to loosen up the soil and and mix straw into it.  About 6 inches down it was very compacted so it really needed to be broken up; and the straw should help with water retention.  Then I transplanted six basil plants from various places in the garden to the north 1/5 of the bed.   In the remaining part of the bed I transplanted onions we started in a 2'x1' pot back in March.   There were hundreds of them in the pot, all totally root bound.  I separated them transplanted the biggest 40, gave some to the Indian woman who showed me how to grow garlic a couple of years ago, and some to the HOA's landscaper to take home and put in his garden.  What was left over went in the compost pile.

There was ash from the fires on the ground this morning.  On cars and on the balcony, too.  One of the fires, a small one was about 1/4 mile from my house but San Jose Fire Department extinguished it in just a few hours.   The smoke is so thick today that I had to turn on the lights in the house and the street lights (they come on automatically when it gets dark outside.) came on about 11 a.m.  The sky is dark orange and even the hummingbirds are confused.  They are acting like it is end-of-day feeding time.  The nice thing about today is that it is cooler than it has been in a week.