September 3rd, 2006
Week 35: 8/27 - 9/2
The garden has died–not just the plants, but the soil. This is the bed that I dug the daylilies out of.
Dateline: 2006
Let’s sum up August so that we can be through with it. August 2006 in Austin was the hottest on record: the average daily temperature was 88.5F and the average high temperature was 100.7. Unlike 2000 (see below), we didn’t receive a lot of record breaking high temperatures. Instead it was hot every day; 24 days reached 100 degrees or higher.
Luckily, this week we got our first taste of fall. On Tuesday (8/29) morning rush hour started with rain. (Bewildered motorists crashed left and right.) In my garden it was barely enough to soak in 1/32 of an inch, but it did fill the rain buckets. I opened all the windows to smell it. Nighttime temperatures which had been in the high 70s all month dropped to a chilly 67 on Thursday (8/31). However, the high that day climbed back to 102.
With Tuesday’s temperature barely reaching 90, I was in the garden all afternoon. I dug up the daylilies, which hadn’t flowered this year. The leaves had withered and I worried that they might be rotting under the mulch. They weren’t. They were withered. I think I can revive the daylilies; it’s the dirt that’s dead.
When I planted these daylilies four years ago, I amended the soil with peat moss, bought compost, and compost sifted from my mulch pile. This bed has always been mulched. All the organic material has since been sucked dry. All that’s left is dry lumps of baked blackland prairie clay. There’s no earthworms–probably no micro-organisms. The soil is as dead as a rock. If this is the condition of the rest of the yard (and there is every reason to think that it is), I can see why even drought-resistant native plants are giving up the ghost this year.
My problems with my little patch of Texas are miniscule compared with those people around the state who farm and ranch for a living.
Billions of dollars have evaporated, even more than the $2.1 billion lost during a 1998 drought, Texas Cooperative Extension economists reported in August. Crop losses have been estimated at $2.5 billion, and losses from livestock, underfed and rushed to market, are pegged at $1.6 billion. Wheat yields per acre in Texas have been the lowest since the 1920s.
Although it is the nature of gardeners to complain about the weather, Henry Mitchell said that what sets gardeners apart is defiance. So now that August is over, I’m gritting my teeth and donning my gloves. If I’m doomed to start completely over after 13 years, so be it.
First flower: Rhodophiala bifida (8/30).
Dateline: 2004
It’s official. August 2004 was the fourth coolest on record; the coolest since 1973. That makes it the coolest ever for me. I moved to Austin in 1974.
Tonight we opened up the house and turned on the whole house fan to cool it. It’s actually cooler outside than in (82F now at 8:30 at night).
Dateline: 2001
Second wettest August on record with 9.48 inches precip (7.43 inches above normal).
Monday August 27, 2001
Dark and cooler, barely reaching the 90. Very muggy however. When it does begin to rain again in the afternoon, I open up all the window and get in bed with a glass of wine and a Nancy Drew mystery. Such indulgence. (Camp Mabry gets 1.72 inches of rain–a record for this day.)
Wednesday August 29, 2001
Temperatures fantastically cool: the high temperature is 76 in town and 75 at the airport, the all time record low temperature for this date.
Friday August 31, 2001
Sixth day of rain in a row. The rain lilies and oxblood lilies sprang up after last Sunday’s heavy rain. The rain lilies lay prostrate, their flowers littering the meadow like wet, pink tissue paper.
Dateline: 2000
Saturday September 2, 2000
This is the third day of record-breaking high of 107 degrees. Not only did we break the record high Thursday, Friday and today, but it is highest temperature ever recorded in Austin in September. [Note: The all time record high is broken every day until September 5 when it reaches 112 degrees.)
8/31, 107; 9/1, 107; 9/2, 107; 9/3, 108; 9/4, 110; 9/5, 112
Dateline: 1999
Hottest August on record: average daily temperature 88.3 degrees.
Dateline: 1996
Saturday August 31, 1996
Some sunlight finally after a week of rain. The forecast had called only for rain last Thursday and Friday, but I think the only day it didn’t rain was Monday.
It rains heavily again about 9:30PM when AJM, JQS and I are watching Withnail and I. There is a lot of thunder and lightening, the electricity goes out momentarily, but no wind.
Monday September 2, 1996
Many spring plants have sprouted: spiderworts, false dayflowers, and best of all the bluebonnets that I planted last year. Ryegrass is also coming up.
I see oxblood lilies in a couple of other neighborhood yards.
Dateline: 1995
Tuesday August 29, 1995
A real rain at last–keeping with the tradition of raining the las. week o. August. There have been sprinkles in the last week. But tonight at 6:30 it began sprinkling. By 6:45 it began to rain properly and by 6:50 it was pouring. It rained hard for at least half an hour.
by M Sinclair Stevens in Austin, Texas
September 3rd, 2006
We’ve had rain 5 of the last 8 days now. Not big rains but at least enough to wet the ground and cool things off. Today it’s cloudy again. I’ve been running soaker hoses to add to it..
A lot of the vegetation had burned up already though. We are even starting to lose trees.
September 3rd, 2006
I’m sorry about your garden. That gumbo clay does look dreadful during a drought, but maybe it’ll prove less dead than you fear.
Even with the extra water I was forced to give my usually drought-tolerant garden this summer, I lost some plants too, including a few daylilies but also, surprisingly, some damianitas and a coral honeysuckle. Several other plants are struggling.
I hope the end is near though and the rains will soon return. At least the weather has turned a little cooler.
I noticed the leaves on the cedar elms turning buttery yellow today. Fall is here and I’m hyped. — mss
September 3rd, 2006
Is that possible… the AVERAGE temperature for August was 88.5 degrees? Wow! I feel so badly for you; here in eastern Iowa we had a monumental drought last summer, but even that was mild compared to what you’ve experienced… but I’d never seen WEEDS die before, which some did here. I looked at your extended forecast, and it looks cooler and slightly rainier. Fall is coming… it’s almost chilly here, and has been raining off and on all day… your weather will change.
Yep. Average daily: 88.5. Average high: 100.7. Last month it was rare if the nighttime low went below 76. Unlike the desert we don’t have a marked drop in nighttime temperatures to provide any relief. — mss
September 4th, 2006
You have my sympathy and respect for your drought issues. I live in the mountains of northern Arizona. (yes I live in the desert, but still, you have to garden. Little water, years of drought, seem to be a way of life here. What really bothers me though is the death of the trees. They will be fine prob. next year, but the year after that watch out. Diseases and bugs will get them. There defences are week. Doesn’t matter how much rain you get next year either, the year after that… they will croak. Pretty depressing I know, but hey we are gardeners in the southwest…we are a little nuts.
Pinon Pine trees are very tough, but they are dying in great swaths around here. I have some 200 plus year old trees in my yard that have survived who knows how many major droughts, dying this year. Oh well, know any good fast growing weed trees that can grow in rock???
My mother’s family has lived in northern New Mexico for five generations and I grew up in the deserts of New Mexico, southern California, and Nevada. One of the reasons I stayed in Austin when my family returned home is that I fell in love with Austin’s lakes, trees, and grass. I fell in love with green. (Sure miss mountains, though.) I’ve heard about the plight of the pinons, Regional Vegetation Die-Off in Response to Drought. I notice that like in Texas, comparisons are being made to the 17 year drought in the 1950s. It might be hotter and, worse, their many, many more people sharing the same water resources. The only weedy tree I can think of is the hackberry…it’s done amazingly well this summer. — mss
September 4th, 2006
Your comment about “my little patch of Texas are miniscule compared with those people around the state who farm and ranch for a living” is right on. It’s one thing to see your garden of pleasure dry up, but a whole different thing when your livelihood is involved. You have to have a whole lot of what Henry Mitchell called “defiance”, as well as eternal optimism. It’s a rare trait and one reason we should be glad that people still exists that have these qualities.
On the one hand, I’m easily discouraged; on the other, I have the tenacity of a bulldog. The combination (not easy to live with) results in a dogged determination to see something through while bitching and moaning the whole way. Sometimes I have to look around at other people’s problems so that I can get some perspective and not make so much of mine. — mss
September 4th, 2006
Oh, M, that garden will need help to recover. With a chance to redo beds and plan anew, are there parts of the garden that you were unhappy with anyway? After 13 years you’re not the same person as the one who started planting. You can have some of my liriope, pink rain lilies, City of Portland Cannas, Salvia guaranitica, White flags, purple iris, etc., if you want!
Unlike you, R Sorrell and Pam, I’ve watered my borders and containers enough to keep almost everything alive, but have pretty much ignored the lawn. We moved to Austin at the end of July, 1999, just in time to catch August 1999’s record-breaking heat. I’ve always thought of Austin as a place that exists solely because of dams and irrigation, in no way a natural location. I never had a philosophical objection to watering, I guess.
September 13th, 2006
I recently discovered your site by accident during a Google search and have really enjoyed reading your garden log. This has been a horrible summer, but thankfully the rains have come at last as well as cooler weather. I did supplemental watering this summer, but still lost all or part of 3 large wax myrtles (which were in partial shade), a coral honeysuckle and several perennials as well as most annuals. What a summer! It almost convinced me to move.
Great to hear from another Central Texas gardener. I think we’ve survived another summer. Now the real gardening can begin again. — mss