The primary task that can be done after dark is watering. It makes sense. Evaporation is less at night, so you get more value from the water you're applying. In addition, your plants greet the morning fully hydrated and ready to face the heat of the day. You can irrigate lawns or flower beds as well as patio container plants. You can also fertilize potted plants.

This assumes you've got sufficient lighting to see what you're doing. Although I prefer softer lighting when entertaining on my patio, I also have a spotlight both for security and after dark tasks.

I've always enjoyed my patio in the evening. As the heat of the day abates, many flowers look especially beautiful and some become highly fragrant. It's a treat for the senses. My pets also like hanging out with me after it cools down.

I also take advantage of cooler temperatures to groom container plants. I remove dead leaves and flowers at my leisure. I use a long pair of welder's tweezers to get to seeds, dead leaves and other debris that lodge in the nooks and crannies of cactus and succulents. If you don't have welder's tweezers, you can pick up a pair for about five dollars at a hardware store. You'll wonder how you got along without them.

Sometimes I'll notice bug bites on certain plants. This year, much of the damage I'm seeing is due to high populations of earwigs. These chewing insects are shiny, thin, dark brown about three quarters of an inch long, with pinchers at both ends. They feed at night and hide by day, so it's often difficult to determine that they're the culprits eating dahlias, coleus and pansies.

If you sit still and watch, you'll soon become aware of motion all around you on your patio. There are good insects, such as spiders, weaving nets to catch white flies, gnats and flies in the morning. You might spot a stray bee or two asleep in a flower. Sometimes there may be grasshoppers resting on branches.

The main bustle of activity will be from roley-poleys and earwigs. I'm not concerned about the armadillo-like roley-poleys that have the strange ability to roll themselves into an armored ball when threatened. My main concern is about the voracious earwigs. Because I don't use pesticides, I've adopted several methods of control. One easy method is to dampen a loosely-rolled section of newspaper and place it near the plants they're attacking. In the morning--when the earwigs have hidden inside the damp paper--scoop it up into a plastic bag and dispose of it.

The second method involves those welder's tweezers. With good eye/hand coordination and some practice, you can pluck earwigs right from the flowers and leaves they're eating. (I also nab sluggish grasshoppers and slugs as well.) I used to get 50 or 60 earwigs in an evening, but I've reduced their numbers sufficiently that I only find a dozen or so each night.

If this doesn't sound like your idea of fun, go the newspaper route. At any rate, take advantage of a pleasant evening for watering, feeding and grooming.