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2008-06-22. The morning after a slight rain: the grass greens up and the dust is washed off the plants. It’s nice just for a few hours. Sun out early and already searing.<\/i><\/p>\n
Gardening in Austin seems almost predictable when the most remarkable thing that can happen in Week 25 is rain! The sound of it pouring off my roof onto the air conditioner next to my bedroom window woke me up, and I dragged myself out of bed at one in the morning just to smell it…and pump the water into the pond. The rain barrels can’t handle that much rain at once and the pond acts like a 1000 gallon holding tank.\n<\/p>\n
\nBefore the storm, we had a solid chunk of 100-degree days behind us: ten from 6\/12 to 6\/21. At Camp Mabry, the temperatures topped out at 106\u00b0F on 6\/17 and 6\/18, cooling slightly to a mere 105\u00b0F on 6\/19. After the storm, the high plummeted to a mere 90\u00b0F. Sixteen degrees feels cooler no matter where you’re starting from. I spent the rest of Wednesday (6\/22), cleaning up the garden a bit, mowing the lawn, and pumping water into the pond.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe rain is nothing but a brief respite from the continued exceptional drought in Texas. Lake levels are almost half what they should be. Austin looks more and more like the landscapes of my childhood that I had hoped to leave behind.\n<\/p>\n
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2008-06-22. The morning after a slight rain: the grass greens up and the dust is washed off the plants. It’s nice just for a few hours. Sun out early and already searing.<\/i><\/p>\n
You know how irritating it is when you invite people over and they arrive early, before you’re even finished cleaning up for the party and have dressed. Well, the garden blogosphere has been celebrating the official arrival of summer, but we Austinites feel it’s already overstayed its welcome. Go home, Summer. We’ve had enough of you.<\/p>\n
Last year we had major flooding around Austin and I was moaning about the rain. This year we feel cheated when a cloud drops a few sprinkles on one part of town but not ours. We were one of the lucky ones on Saturday (6\/21) and got about 1\/4″ of rain. But the official reading at Camp Mabry (near Pam\/Digging) showed the rain gauge bone dry. I like how Rachel @ In Bloom described it<\/a>; the slight rain didn’t help our gardens much but it was “psychologically healthy”–well for those of us who got some.<\/p>\n Perversely, the heat and dry fading plants have made me want a green lawn more than ever. The front lawn is already lost but I’ve been keeping a little patch in the back. And I’m so glad that I got wood chips from the May 15th storm<\/a> to mulch the mini-woods. If the paths and the woods weren’t freshly mulch right now, I don’t think I could stand how sad and droopy the rest of the garden looks.<\/p>\n Another very rainy Week 25 here in Austin. The lake reservoirs have gone from being half-full to being so full that they had to open the floodgates. We were surprised by heavy rain early in the week when it poured south but not so much north. Yesterday AJM reported it was pouring north, at his office, but we only got a few sprinkles south.<\/p>\n Not much new is happening in the garden. It’s mostly green and jungly-looking. The canna and the banana are very happy with this wet heat. I should be doing more weeding but it’s unpleasant to be outside even early in the morning. The evenings are even worse because of the mosquitoes. I don’t have to be outside watering so, as far as I’m concerned, the garden can go wild on its own.<\/p>\n Time for a break.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n Now this was the kind of week that we love June for…rain, rain, and more rain. Rain almost every day of the week. The temperatures came down and the earth smelled damp. What a joy (despite the mosquitoes) to be outside and watch the garden come back to life.<\/p>\n The St Augustine grass transformed into a brilliant shade of green. I hadn’t mown it in a couple of weeks; it’s impossible to mow it with a reel mower when the grass is lying flat and crunchy under foot. I mowed it at the beginning of the week as soon as it dried out and had to mow it again by the end of the week.<\/p>\n The rainlilies popped up. White rainlilies had bloomed in April but this was the first bloom of the year for the pink rainlilies (Zephyranthes grandiflora<\/a><\/i>). Annie in Austin (now garden blogging at The Transplantable Rose<\/a>) passed along another variety, ‘Labuffarosea’, and one of them bloomed this week for the first time.The flower is smaller and a much more delicate pink than Z. grandiflora. Another distinguishing characteristic is the way the petals are crimped at the tips.<\/p>\n Other flowers that I thought had given up the ghost started blooming again: four o’clocks, cleome (Polanisa dodecandra<\/a><\/i>), and a few stragglers among the larkspur that I haven’t cleaned out for the year.<\/p>\n Because I didn’t have to water at all this week, I spent most of my garden time cleaning up. Inspired by John Powell’s talk, I cut back the rose of Sharon by one-third to keep it bushy. Some disappointing news. I lost another rose, ‘Ducher’, to cane dieback. The same thing happened about this time last year to “Caldwell Pink”. I was also disappointed to learn that family-owned Howard’s Nursery closed this month.<\/p>\n We Austinites rely on June rains to prep the garden for the trouble that lies ahead in July and August. Remembering a miserable beginning to the month, I spent this week with my lifted to the skies in thanks. (For those of you who took a faith-based initiative in solving our drought problems, could you be a bit more specific in your prayers? When Houston gets 7 inches of rain in 4 hours, its streets runneth over while poor San Marcos is left with its cup still empty.)<\/p>\n First flower: Zephyranthes grandiflora (6\/20); Zephryanthes ‘Labuffarosea’ (6\/20); Crinum, unidentified white (6\/24).<\/p>\n I have a new favorite garden writer, Hanna in Cleveland of This Garden is Illegal<\/a>. Her tongue-in-cheek style is just the antidote to all the garden ranting that seems suddenly fashionable. Hanna has some of the cleverest titles I’ve come across.<\/p>\nDateline: 2007<\/h3>\n
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2007-06-18. Most of my summer flowers are too small to show up well in this kind of photograph but notice how green and overgrown the garden is just now. I’m loving it.<\/i><\/p>\nDateline: 2006<\/h3>\n
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2006-06-20. Annie in Austin gave me these rainlilies which bloomed for the first time this week after rain brought relief to Austin and disaster to Houston.<\/i><\/p>\nElsewhere in the Virtual Garden<\/h4>\n
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