It's sun and clouds with wildfire smoke haze, in the mid 70s headed up to the mid 80s. The air was so bad from the smoke yesterday it clogged up my sinuses in the afternoon and I got a nasty sinus headache that eventually turned into a migraine. I had to take Tylenol and lie down for a nap before dinner. Quite unexpectedly we had light rain come up from South Jersey in the evening and that made my sinuses run, made me sneeze. I saw on the FedEx website yesterday evening they put up the wrong information. My package from Herrschner's is due to arrive Saturday, not yesterday as it originally stated. All around it was not a fun day. The only bright spot was watching a couple more episodes about the new archaeological dig of the houses of Pompeii on PBS in the evening. It's a fascinating series.

Still no news from the PT place about the status of the renewal for an additional six weeks of physical therapy from my HMO. Currently I'm scheduled to start up again next Monday afternoon. I don't see the foot and ankle orthopedist until the beginning of next month. If the HMO wants a whole new PT prescription from her everything will wind up delayed for three more weeks. What a hassle this is. Previously my HMO would approve extensions right away.

This afternoon as long as my sinuses aren't too bad I'll have to see if the mechanics are there to do the oil change or if they are simply off on a whole vacation week. They've done that before. The rain we got last night was very light, not much more than a couple of hours of drizzle so I'll still need to water the plants today. There is definitely growth in the flower buds of the hibiscus even though most are still quite small. Hopefully the flowers will start popping open in another week or two. It's supposed to be in the 90s all next week so maybe that will speed up the process. They're supposed to be a deeper red color so I'm curious about what they'll look like. My past years' hibiscus plants that had been attacked by a woodchuck were with yellow, then with pink flowers. This time I have the hibiscus next to other plants of equal height so it doesn't stand out at all. The last time I was at the ShopRite it looked like there were still a few hibiscus plants left. Their garden department plants were quickly selling out though. Next time I go I'll have to see if they have any more left.
These hibiscus plants can only tolerate temperatures down to 10 degrees so it will have to be moved into the house, into the sunroom next to a south facing window to get the winter sun when it gets to be November or December.

When I drive home from the supermarket I pass by a house which has a different type of hibiscus that's hardy enough to tolerate our bitter winters. They have multiple plants in the ground in their front yard that produce rather big flowers that are a deep maroon red in the center with rosy pink petals. They produce blossoms on and off all summer into early fall.