It sounds as though you are happy with your garden. :)

The plant with the small purple flowers is a Tradescantia, a kind of spiderwort.

Your tiger lilies should be fine with transplanting. Moving bulbs is always easy because they have stored food for times of stress. Tiger lilies do very well in the South so they should perform as well here as they did up North. I think the only thing you have to worry about is voles.

Mimosa can be transplanted but I'd be careful with those. If you can put it somewhere you can mow all around it that would be good -- they put out hundreds of seedlings every year.

Thanks for sharing. I wish I could come up with a more articulate reflection myself but at this point my reflections would take on a haiku form.

The heatwave scared me
I over watered some plants
They're all dying now

Aezarien, that was well put.

A haiku, that's a good idea.

The heat scares me too.
I can't overwater, it
runs off the dry ground.

Just remember what John reminds us of every year. When the heat gets this extreme, many plants stop photosynthesis.

And when the drought gets too extreme, sometimes plant need water or they die.

Enjoyed the haiku's!

I've been very selective with the watering. I think the water bans here actually help my plants because surely I would water them every day in this heat in the evening after the sun goes down. With things like lambs ears and dusty millers freshly planted surely those would rot out eventually.

Overall I am happy with my tiny gardens. I cant wait until next year to see what comes back!

Lyle

I'm pretty good with plants I know are drought tolerant. My dusty millers look magnificent without my help. I haven't purposely watered them since I planted them. I killed all of my lambs ear trying to overwinter them in my greenhouse window so I have none of those to contend with. I'm sure I over watered those as well. My friend always picks on me about it because I lose plants every year by babying them too much. She asked me today when I was going to learn.

I actually didn't start getting into soil amendments and filling beds with soil I brought in until I moved here so I have lost a few plants to over-watering. Too I had most of plants in containers because I knew I was going to move. I'm just not used to the soil staying moist as long. I guess since my losses are trimmed down some that I am learning though!

Alicia - Your haiku made me giggle until I thought about how much it stinks to be in that predicament. I hate having to pull out the sprinklers (I enjoy hand watering) but that is about all that works once the soil gets that dry.

I'm pleased with my gardens this year also. By cutting back on my weekend activities I have been doing a better job of keeping things weeded and watered so things look great.

I guess it all depends on your soil type but I find that I have to dampen my soil as often as possible otherwise if it should rain there would only be runoff. By hand watering a small amount every day, just enough to moisten the soil it keeps it in the condition to accept a soaking of rainwater (if that should ever happen). I hate to "waste" water, and I respect the full scope of this drought, but legally allowing me to only water twice each week isn't gonna cut it! Something about the wetting and then drying of the soil just makes it "cake" up and watering does no good unless it is an all day soaking rainstorm. This is the season with spotty moving thunderstorms, they aren't gonna sit still long enough to break through this soil. The only solution is to try to keep the most important beds slightly damp by illegally watering every night.

John, I desperately need to weed myself. Since today it';s only in the 80;s and looks like it may rain, I might venture out there right now and pull small trees I have everywhere ( pin oaks) and some grasses that came up in my mulch.

I have to admit, the lily that bloomed today made all my work pay off....see the post I put on earlier.

Lyle

Yeah... What is it with the grass in the mulch/compost?

I'm not sure if it is actual "grass" that is coming up thru the mulch. To be prefectly honest it almost looks like miniature versions of a daylily maybe 3-4 inches tall. But the leaves are grassy in texture. Odd?

Lyle

It sure doesn't remind me of the grass in my yard. I have asked a few times, "Now, why doesn't the grass in my lawn look like this?". It does kind of remind me of miniature day lilies too though. Maybe I should put some in a pot and see what it does heh.

Sounds like a type of grass that's a terrible weed called nutgrass, Cyperus rotundus. The stems/blade are 3 sided. It gets little bulbils in the roots and is very difficult to get rid of. I get it in one spot in my gravel drive each year and have seen it in the mulch before. It's very hard to eradicate permanently because of the little bulbs.

I wouldn't know the difference. I have so many problems with grass in gravel I became convinced that in order to grow grass in a problem area all you needed to do was put gravel there.

I actually had never seen grass in my mulch until we used this one place this year. I haven't taken notice of any bulbs but that is not to say it isn't there because I really didn't pay attention to how it was "attached". I'll have to check it out next time I am pulling weeds.

YES, this type of grass does have tiny bulbs. usually I can pluck the bulb out with the grass leaves. I've pulled a bunch out already and it's mingled in with my actual daylilies too so I've been having a time trying to distinguish the two. Lyle