Sisyphean Gardening: Tales From the Heat Wave
The Lawn
We sowed the grass seed for the back lawn last Sunday, and the temperatures have been creeping up steadily since then. It's a crap shoot to plant grass in July anyway, but we figured that we A) had no choice if we wanted to ever enjoy non-dustbowl conditions this summer, and B) living on the coast lets us get away with somewhat more temperate conditions than we used to have inland. But we are getting clobbered with extra-special heat and humidity for the next three days. As I type, for example, it is 93 degrees, and it is supposed to be hotter (like 100) tomorrow. As for the heat index, I don't even want to know, although it is quite breezy, and there have been some clouds. (Perhaps I should have taken advantage of those clouds to go out and water the orchard, but oh well).
So we run the sprinklers about 15-20 minutes twice a day and hope for the best. I think I may change this plan to running them for shorter periods (like 10 minutes) but three times a day, though, during the heat. I'm not wild about watching money get sprayed into the air like that, and dread the next water bill, but the lawn babying is hopefully just a one-time deal—if it works. The hardest part wasn't the labor so much as listening to people's helpful after-the-fact advice about how stupid it was to plant it now. They will not be invited to the garden grand opening party. Jerks.
The Perennial Border
The other bit of extraordinary bad timing is with plants I ordered for the perennial border at the front of the house. Last spring we didn't do anything to it because we were just keeping track of what was growing there and figuring out where everything was. This spring it rained for like 24 of the 31 days of May, so we didn't get to do anything with it until June. And we probably never would have bothered to start that when we had the huge vegetable garden project, but our contractor was running behind because of the rain, and we were bored and figured we might as well get something done, so there you have it. We ripped out all kinds of things (some we saved in a holding bed on the other side of the house, and we transplanted some peonies to soften up the workshop), and then I drew up a big plan for a red and white flower border (which will be in front of a yellow house, just as soon as we get around to repainting the house...).
I ordered some plants that I wanted, and they arrived a whole month late. I got them this week, during the hottest weather of the whole summer. They are nice and big and are (were?) in excellent condition, and I got a lot of freebies because of the mistakes, but still: terrible, terrible timing to put out new plants.
Anyway, enough complaining. Let's look at pretty flowers:
This is the one lovely daisy on the ones that I planted. That's just as well, since they should be rooting and not flowering, but I couldn't cut it off. The heat is really making most of the plants feel more like this:
However, note the soaker hose. That thing is the single best invention ever. It has seriously changed my life, because now I don't have to lug around my giant, galvanized watering can to nurse these guys through the heat, Ingalls-style. It makes a cheap toy for the kids too, since two of the holes are aiming straight up and they can "accidentally" get soaked while they are "helping."
Behind the daisies against the house are red hollyhocks, but it's really not worth a picture since they are pathetically struggling and aren't in bloom. The other plants I got are much smaller and near the brick path (which is pretty weedy—don't judge). There are campanula "White Clips" and some Jacob's ladder, which has variegated leaves with pretty white edges:
There's also a little freebie hosta in the back, but it's getting moved to a shadier spot.
I'm really loving all the white, and probably could have been totally happy with an all-white border. Our old house was red, though, which meant no red flowers up against it, so I couldn't resist having red roses climb up the sides of the porch and the hollyhocks for red height too. We'll see how it goes if and when things come into bloom.
We sowed the grass seed for the back lawn last Sunday, and the temperatures have been creeping up steadily since then. It's a crap shoot to plant grass in July anyway, but we figured that we A) had no choice if we wanted to ever enjoy non-dustbowl conditions this summer, and B) living on the coast lets us get away with somewhat more temperate conditions than we used to have inland. But we are getting clobbered with extra-special heat and humidity for the next three days. As I type, for example, it is 93 degrees, and it is supposed to be hotter (like 100) tomorrow. As for the heat index, I don't even want to know, although it is quite breezy, and there have been some clouds. (Perhaps I should have taken advantage of those clouds to go out and water the orchard, but oh well).
So we run the sprinklers about 15-20 minutes twice a day and hope for the best. I think I may change this plan to running them for shorter periods (like 10 minutes) but three times a day, though, during the heat. I'm not wild about watching money get sprayed into the air like that, and dread the next water bill, but the lawn babying is hopefully just a one-time deal—if it works. The hardest part wasn't the labor so much as listening to people's helpful after-the-fact advice about how stupid it was to plant it now. They will not be invited to the garden grand opening party. Jerks.
The Perennial Border
The other bit of extraordinary bad timing is with plants I ordered for the perennial border at the front of the house. Last spring we didn't do anything to it because we were just keeping track of what was growing there and figuring out where everything was. This spring it rained for like 24 of the 31 days of May, so we didn't get to do anything with it until June. And we probably never would have bothered to start that when we had the huge vegetable garden project, but our contractor was running behind because of the rain, and we were bored and figured we might as well get something done, so there you have it. We ripped out all kinds of things (some we saved in a holding bed on the other side of the house, and we transplanted some peonies to soften up the workshop), and then I drew up a big plan for a red and white flower border (which will be in front of a yellow house, just as soon as we get around to repainting the house...).
I ordered some plants that I wanted, and they arrived a whole month late. I got them this week, during the hottest weather of the whole summer. They are nice and big and are (were?) in excellent condition, and I got a lot of freebies because of the mistakes, but still: terrible, terrible timing to put out new plants.
Anyway, enough complaining. Let's look at pretty flowers:
This is the one lovely daisy on the ones that I planted. That's just as well, since they should be rooting and not flowering, but I couldn't cut it off. The heat is really making most of the plants feel more like this:
However, note the soaker hose. That thing is the single best invention ever. It has seriously changed my life, because now I don't have to lug around my giant, galvanized watering can to nurse these guys through the heat, Ingalls-style. It makes a cheap toy for the kids too, since two of the holes are aiming straight up and they can "accidentally" get soaked while they are "helping."
Behind the daisies against the house are red hollyhocks, but it's really not worth a picture since they are pathetically struggling and aren't in bloom. The other plants I got are much smaller and near the brick path (which is pretty weedy—don't judge). There are campanula "White Clips" and some Jacob's ladder, which has variegated leaves with pretty white edges:
There's also a little freebie hosta in the back, but it's getting moved to a shadier spot.
I'm really loving all the white, and probably could have been totally happy with an all-white border. Our old house was red, though, which meant no red flowers up against it, so I couldn't resist having red roses climb up the sides of the porch and the hollyhocks for red height too. We'll see how it goes if and when things come into bloom.
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