~K. D’Angelo
I have spent the last 4 days, watering with saved rain water, pulling weeds, clipping pernicious Yaupon sprouts, marveling at the peaches hanging from the branches of well past their prime Ranger peach trees. We thought the frost got them all. I even had one on my cereal this morning!
After months of monsoon type rain this spring that flooded gardens and drowned many plants. Plants I never thought would be bothered. Tough old standbys that were alive and green every spring and hung on in the heat of summer.
“Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet.”
― Roger Miller
We were gone for 10 days in May visiting family and returned to drowned and dying plants everywhere. My wheelbarrow had 12" in it. I wish I could have saved more than I did of the precious rain. The grass and weeds were 12" tall or better.
The mole damage to my paths is still waiting for an idea and energy to repair. They undermined from one bed to another and there are sink holes all over.
Needless to say it has been an overwhelming summer. I have not felt up to snuff for months and feel it most when trying to do garden things. We were gone the first week of July visiting grand children and returned to more dead and dying plants.
My bed of Salvia Greggi that fed bees, butterflies and hummingbirds had lost all their leaves. Some are greening up, but most are done.
Some flowers came back with careful watering and deadheading or cutting stems that have shot up too high when fed with much water and pitiful leaves and flowers not capable feeding the most persistent bee. There are no beautiful white and blue salvias. I have pinched and cut them down to 3 or 4inches. I will water some in hopes they will come up for fall.
In the midst of pity party, I watched a humming bird rest on a bit of fence and then feed on the surviving butterfly bush. I thought it was dying at one point, but it has come back.
I have watched tiny yellow sulphur butterflies, called Dainty Sulphur, flitting around what blossoms are still available.
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| About 1½ inches |
Another reason to just enjoy nature for what it is. Grieving over dead and dying plants is not what gardeners do. We slowly let them go and plan for next time.
These are pictures of my most photogenic zinnias. To some, they are dead, to me they are guaranteed keepers on my Bloggie camera. It loves them.
nursery. My only successful seed growing this
year.
The stems are tall and then, tiny blossoms.
About the size of a walnut.
The pinks turn this lovely pinkish brown.
Time to let the gardens die. Stop fighting the heat, dry soil, critters. Time to rest up, make plans and tackle the garden in the fall.
There are changes rattling around in my head of creating a smaller,more manageable garden area(s).
Should put the ideas on paper as they flit into my thoughts and flit right out again.
I think hubby has to be involved in this project.
