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Summer 2012
I would love to share with you what's blooming in my garden right now, but I can't get past that my father.in.law died earlier today. I can't think strait much less type anything much else, I've been a wreck since we found out. I spent some time mindlessly deadheading the roses this evening & spraying for aphids again to distract myself some.
Jo, my condolences, I am sorry for your loss.
I am so sorry Jo. Was it unexpected? (Not that it makes it easier one way or the other actually, so nevermind.)Gardening is very therapeutic at times like this though, thank the good Lord.
So sorry to hear this sad news, Jo. My thoughts are with you.
Blooms are starting to pop in my yard. Lilies, day lilies, yarrow, bell flowers, hardy geraniums, daisies, I even have a couple hydrangeas with blooms opening. Clematis are wonderful right now, always hate to see them go.
I am jealous Cheryl; my daylilies are gone, long gone. Very early this year. Asiatic lilies, ditto.
Sweat dripping into my eyes, rock chips flying, pick ax swinging-and the prettiest little red myrtle tree waiting to be planted RIGHT here...in the rock garden. Three-3-apples on 2 six year old trees. It hasn't rained in a month and a half. Wishing for a hurricane. It's summer in the Hill Country.Roses, sunflowers, zinnias, daisies, sages, datura,lavender, myrtles and a confused apple blossom or two are all blooming. Butterflies are flying around in a haphazard, dazed sort of way, occasionally bouncing into each other.
Jo; my deepest condolences. With any luck our neighbour will remember to water the tomato, basil, chili combo in sunny Q8..... in Egypt right now chilling....
The political situation in Egypt seems a little dicey right now; do you have friends or just playing tourist? I hope your neighbors come through with the water.
Thank you Maggie, Miriam, Miss Jessie, Cheryl and Harvey for your condolences!
Jesse, my much better half is Egyptian and we have property there. Touch wood, things seem calm enough; OK, the traffic is as mad as always, can't play the tourist :) Too much of an old hand!Impossible of course to predict the future, but there is a very good chance things will work themselves out. It will take time, but there are some positive indications that Dr. Morsey is trying to calm things.....
Welcome Jo, welcome...
LOL about the Cairo traffic. I have never in my life seen anything to compare and that was 10+ yrs ago. Buses, cars, trucks, SUVs, donkeys, horses, CAMELS, bicycles, people on food, no lane markers; stop lights apparently are advisory only and horns work real well :)
MissJessie wrote: "I am jealous Cheryl; my daylilies are gone, long gone. Very early this year. Asiatic lilies, ditto."Bummer! This is early for us too, usually the 2nd wk of July.
Did hit 90 degrees + today, but the humidity was not as bad as predicted. Now it looks like it might rain which would be fine.
MissJessie wrote: "LOL about the Cairo traffic. I have never in my life seen anything to compare and that was 10+ yrs ago. Buses, cars, trucks, SUVs, donkeys, horses, CAMELS, bicycles, people on food, no lane marke..."Heyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!! The lights are for decor!!!! Don't you all understand this?
You stop when the police say so. Very, very simple.
Right turns you take your chance. What is your problem??? LOL
PS (a) it actually does work and (b) it totally confused the Japanese one-time advisers! :) (no joke!)
Jo, I'm so sorry to hear of your loss. Take care. I'm spending a lot of time watering, both with the hose and with capturing and distributing household rinse water. No rain to speak of for over a month. (The most we've gotten has been less than 2/10th of an inch of rain at one time.) So far, I'm keeping plants alive, and the tomatoes have rewarded my efforts with some really nice fruit. There's nothing to compare with the taste of the first seasonal tomatoes. Yum!
A friend bet on his tomatoes ripening before mine. He lost the bet! How fun.
Hot here, but nothing like further south. Also shocked about the bad storms on the East Coast last night and the loss of life. This seems to be the year of extremes.
Thank you Kimberly!Heat wave #2 of Summer is upon us though so far it doesn't feel as horrendous as the first one. Things are winding down in one section of the garden and now gearing up in the one raised bed I have. The purple coneflowers at the corner are 4 feet tall this year! And the others are maybe2.5 feet tall and such a pretty peach color. (I forget their name right now).
Massive water main break is causing havoc in our county. State of emergency, mandatory water restrictions and boil advisories. Thank God our town govt fought to keep our well system and stayed separate from the rest so we're ok!!! (Only 5 towns in the county are separate) Not that you can find a bottle of water in either of the supermarkets in town anyway lol! The news caused such a panic on Friday. I swear it looked like Hurricane Irene all over again with no water (and the meat case coincidentally broke at the same time so there was no meat in the one market).
I keep forgetting I have to get pumpkin seeds! It's time to plant them!
A friend was driving from Pennsylvania home to North Carolina and drove thru the area of West Virginia affected by the recent storm. She said it was so scary--looked like an atomic bomb had gone off. For miles there was nothing. Her gas tank read "gas enough to drive 2 miles" when she was finally able to locate an open gas station. Even tho it's stinking hot here with ugly humidity I am feeling lucky compared to what others are going through right now.
Yes,Cheryl,I am feeling very fortunate as well. Our weather is hot and we have not had enough rain but compared to the misfortunes of others we have little to complain about. There have been terrible storms very close to my home in the Philadelphia area but we have not been affected.
Cheryl, I drove through West Virginia once, without storm damage, and had trouble finding a gas station THEN. This was years ago, before the economy tanked everywhere. There were lots of abandoned stations, but few open. It has been a devastated area for a long time.
South NJ was hit hard by those same storms that hit the Virginia's and they're still without power too - they were hit harder than last year during Hurricane Irene! No power or water down there still and we've got a hell of a heat wave going on. Humidity has dropped but the heat has soared so it's still awful out.
The size of this heat wave is incredible, plus the fires out west seems like most of the country is suffering with something. We did get about an inch of rain during the night. Guess it stormed, but I slept through it. Not much mess to clean up but the humidity went even higher because of the added moisture. Did work outside for a couple of hours this AM but that was enuf for me.
Come to Egypt for benign weather!!!!!!!!!! Invited!!!!!!!
Harvey wrote: "Come to Egypt for benign weather!!!!!!!!!! Invited!!!!!!!"LOL! Sounds very tempting at the moment.
Yes it does. Projected high tomorrow 100 degrees F. Still no rain to speak of; .8 inches several days ago, all in a little span of time so most of it ran off. I am watering the flower beds and yard constantly; thank God for wells. And a/c.
We were without outside power the night of the storms for over six and a half hours; the first test of our generator. Worked a champ; 5 second delay and then everything back to normal. Although, I hate to think of the cost if it happened very often :).
But, no sweat (literally and figurtively).
I'm starting to get cabin fever. Stepped outside this AM to do the watering and felt like my breath was being sucked out of my body. 90 degrees at 7:30A. Have been inside ever since.
I'm gardening, but in short spurts throughout the day. I can't take the heat for more than an hour at a time. Today, I got the lime and lemon trees planted into larger pots, adding water retention crystals to the bottom of both pots. Thursday broke both high and low temperature records in the same day: high was 102 and low was 79. Saturday is supposed to be 103, and we've still not gotten rain. The peaches on one tree are shriveling. The two peach trees beside the alley got a good soaking when my neighbor's hose burst while they were on vacation. I discovered the water leak and phoned the utilities department. The man argued with me on the phone about there even being a leak, but decided to send a man by anyway because, he admitted, there were some water meters facing the alley, and it could be a water main leak. The first thing the inspector did was check my meter (in the front of my house), and let me know, yeah, it's not your leak. He was kind enough, though, to return and let me know what happened with my neighbor's hose so I could tell them when they returned home.
Harvey wrote: "Come to Egypt for benign weather!!!!!!!!!! Invited!!!!!!!"I've always dreamed of going there to visit the ancient ruins!
102* today and we're back to being in a drought per the drought map for the US! 'Nuff said!
The heat wave has broken here. High of 86 today but the humidity is way down to 58. Makes such a huge difference. Saw lightening all around us last night but only got about a 10 minute rainfall. Enough to take care of the potted plants overnight but not enough for the beds or garden.
Nasty storms passed through earlier. Another person was killed by lightning within 6 miles of here. Apparently many are without power.
Jo, how awful!Cheryl, 86 sounds heavenly. It was 98 in the shade today, according to my back porch thermometer. I worked outside in 15-minute increments; couldn't take more than that.
I wish the news would get things right. Last night they said she was killed by lightning. As of this morning, apparently she's in critical condition in a local hospital. As the weatherman said this morning, if you can Hear thunder, no matter how distant, you can get struck by lightning!!! So head for shelter even if it doesn't look like a storm will arrive - lightning can be ahead of a storm 10-20 miles!
She apparently left the beach and then stood on the sea wall to watch the storm instead of getting in her car like others did! I know where she was and that made her probably the tallest thing there which is what lightning more often than not strikes. Very foolish! That sky and lightning was something else and I tell you, though we watched it from the front porch, we were just about up against the front door doing so.
The storms nowadays are so much more violent, there's no way I'm not heading for shelter when they come up!
Kimberly wrote: "Jo, how awful!Cheryl, 86 sounds heavenly. It was 98 in the shade today, according to my back porch thermometer. I worked outside in 15-minute increments; couldn't take more than that."
We had 9 days of the +90s, 2 of them over 100 so I think the 86 feels heavenly too. It was still darn hot mowing lawn today--no breeze and higher humidity.
Jo wrote: "I wish the news would get things right. Last night they said she was killed by lightning. As of this morning, apparently she's in critical condition in a local hospital. As the weatherman said..."
I played golf for many years and there was always someone who didn't want to stop play just because we could hear thunder. Right. Lets all stand around with metal clubs in our hands and wait for the storm to pass.
Exactly!Sadly, the news said she died this morning.
It is glorious here this morning! 70s with low humidity and a lovely on-shore breeze. SO glad for the break! 5+ days of 90s and 100s was too many for me lol! I can hear the sigh of relief from my garden too :o)
Drat. Had to pull yet another tomato plant that is finished. I hate this time of year. I did plant some more zucchini seeds in that spot--hoping to get a bit more yield. These next 2 months are not good garden months in Texas...
Cheryl S. wrote: "Jo wrote: "I wish the news would get things right. Last night they said she was killed by lightning. As of this morning, apparently she's in critical condition in a local hospital. As the weat..."
LOL at the metal sticks. But I have come to view this stupidity as nature's way of upping the intelligence of the gene pool; albiet at the expense of grief to families.
Finally a really decent day. Low 80s and low humidity. A breath of fresh air in more ways than one. Sleeping with the windows open tonight for the first time in 10 days. Can't wait!All my mid summer stuff is in full bloom right now. Daisies, lilies, cone flowers, belladonna delphiniums, bell flowers, yarrow, hardy geraniums and some of the hydrangeas.
Should be picking peas in a few days, tomatoes are starting to form on the plants and the rest of the garden stuff is looking good but seems to be growing quite slowly. Maybe I'm just too impatient!
I have watered deeply twice now since returning, and the ground is still bone dry! I have several items that I am afraid I will lose, so may dig them up and pot them, move them to the shade. The weather is not AS hot here, but still not a drop of rain to be had.
100 today, 105 tomorrow, 103 day after tomorrow according to Yahoo; dry, dry,dry of course. That sums it up for me.
We got a bit of rain today and it stayed just below 90. Much better than last summer. We had those 103 and up days for most of July, Aug and part of Sept. By the end of last summer I was so exhausted. That heat is an emotional drain.
Worked on the perennial beds today and the soil is dust. The grass is burning up and the trees are dropping dead leaves. It feels like the end of August instead of the first part of July. Humidity on the rise again after today but no rain predicted.
I noticed that my plants on my hellstrip are now wilting. They are the hardiest plants in my yard! So I will now be watering the hell strip!Potted up some plants that were just dying in the ground, so I could move them in to the shade and save them. Have more to do the same with, but ran out of big pots- have been trying to declutter, so gave a bunch away a while back!
The question is, after two years of drought, do I start to change my landscaping to embrace a new climate, or is this only temporary? I am working on my landscaping anyway, trying to make it less labor intense.
I think we're all starting to wonder about that now Miriam! (re climate, drought etc)
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