We are in the mid-Atlantic, so not usually a extreme area, but we had 58" of snow last winter that broke so many limbs on my old, large shrubs. Then, with the 100 degree weather and no rain to speak of this summer, I have lost several dogwoods (won't know the exact number until I see what doesn't leaf out next spring, but anywhere up to seven) and numerous azaleas and perennials. All this despite watering regularly (water bill for three months was $600-a record for our little half-acre! It is normally around $80-$90 for three months.

Hope you feel a little better now, gg. Oh, and what the weather hasn't taken down, the galloping gardeners have-especially when the grandpuppy joins them for a play date. :(

I'm supposed to be in a great zone (8), but this year has been HOT HOT HOT! Over 100 degrees for almost 20 days straight this summer, and I'm still waiting for the rain. We have had two small sprinkles since July 3 (the last day it really rained).

Some scattered showers have given relief to some around here, but no rain on my little spot, so I'm dealing with watering, heat, and then - the armadillos! They come to the garden because it's the only place around that (thanks to my watering) has any moisture in it, digging up my bulbs, rooting up whole plants, making big holes in my grass paths.

Surely you feel better now! lol

There is no rain in SoCal during summer, very little and only if we get lucky in fall and spring, and not much in the winter either. Triple digits every summer in the inland valleys. Many plants burn every summer and about every five to ten winters all the tropicals freeze to death.

Everything must be irrigated all of the time, unless you have a well established native garden. Most people water their lawns daily. If they are on drought restrictions, they water three or four times a week. I water twice a week for most of the year and three times a week in August.

My bi-monthly water bill was $376.00 last month. The property is almost a half acre, but I garden on much less than half of that. If I miss one watering in the summer, the whole shebang just about up and dies.
Renee

I'm feeling better already! can you grow lilies in the hotter areas? If so, when do they bloom? What about peonies?

Or you could live in my zone6, southwest Missouri and have tornadoes and ice storms and power outages!

Last ice storm destroyed so many trees that every fall the landscape still looks like a war zone.

Wow, that water bill would end my gardening!

I grow peonies and lilies. The stargazers bloom in June. Peonies start in late March usually and last about a week. We're going without rain now for a while too. We've had a few showers here and there this summer, but it's been way too dry. It's got to rain sometime, right?

We also have mosquitoes. Sometimes, a person can confuse them with hummingbirds. And humidity. In the 90% range this morning. It's 72 degrees.

Hi gardengirl 403 - I'll do what I can. The best I can offer is a rather damp August - 5 inches of rain, 2 inches of which was on one day. I am still waiting with bated breath for my first red tomato. But I haven't had to water them!

Along with a warmer zone comes all the critters that like to live with us. Scorpions, they live in the soil around the foundation and will sting your hands or feet while watering or digging. Fire ants, these little miscreants don't just live in giant mounds and mind their own business, they have explorers who go out looking for someone to attack, subdue and devour. Poisonous snakes, rattlers and copperheads, just want to stay cool and be left alone, and they want to do it in your potted plants on your porch. Black widow spiders and brown recluse spiders, both of which have a painful bite and like to hide in places like the fingers in a pair of sturdy gardening gloves. Last but not least, the dinosaur of bugs, the cockroaches, whose only real enemy, besides us, is the scorpion. Feeling any better? Cheryl

Like Renee i live in S.Calif,but our weather is different from hers as we are along the coast.We are on water restrictions,and can only water 3 times a week,and it has to be between 6pm and 10 am and for only 20 minutes each.

Our weather this year has not been so good,we really havn't had a summer yet,they said our july was the coldest recorded in 100 years.

Then we have may grey,june gloom and july fright.Had a few pretty hot days in august,and now we are back to gloomy and foggy mornings.Some of my plants like Nandina have mildew,as do some of the zinnias,as we havn't had enough sun.

We sure could use some rain.

Of all these postings so far,i could deal with any of the conditions posted EXCEPT Seamommys.Think i'd have to move,if i lived there,don't like all those bugs,snakes and scorpions.One of my nieces moved to Plano texas one year from Buffalo N.Y. She didn't even last 6 mos,said there were too many bugs for her,packed up her kids and went back to buffalo.
Kathi

Wow... reading this has made my eyes big and mouth drop. It amazes me what so many of us put up with for the love of our gardens. However, the rewards here and there usually make it all worth it.

This summer has had almost nothing but days in the 90s and 100s, (EVEN EASTER) and so little rain that I don't even remember the last time we even got a shower.

I can't keep up with watering my lawn. I don't have sprinklers, and because it is very big (even with all of the borders I've added), It can't seem to get enough to look decent. On the plus side, I have no weeds... But the rest looks like hay and gray-green grass most of the time. Needless to say, I hate grass. :)

According to some meteorologic sources, this summer has been one of the hottest (if not the hottest) years globally in recorded history, (I read that on weather.com and noaa.gov) and the trend is supposed to continue.

I don't mean to be complain and be negative. Life is beautiful and worth the living because HE lives! This is just one year and there will always be better ones. Hope this makes you feel somewhat better, gardengal! :)

Okay here goes. Do you like Mimosa trees? They are so invasive they line the roads (as does wisteria) and they will sneak into your garden almost overnight. The taproot goes halfway to China. Miss a few days and you'll need a tractor to pull it out. Forget digging.

Rose of Sharon, Crepe Myrtles, Wisteria? They are a constant battle. And these are the pretty weeds. Creeping Charlie, Quack Grass, Johnson grass, Bermuda grass, kudzu? ad nauseum. And it has been very dry most of the year...and still they grow.

Heat? We set a new record for our state. We had 56 days of 90 plus weather (many of those days were 100 plus with heat indexes 10 degrees higher.)

Did you have spring? We went almost straight from winter to summer. Today, September 7th, it was 91. We are still running the air conditioner. If it doesn't rain and you don't water, you will have only weeds because your precious plants will burn up and die.

Oh yes lantana. A lovely plant where you want it. Not so good just anywhere her birds plant it. And don't try to grow lupines, larkspur or delphiniums. You're kidding yourself.

On the other hand, I picked gardenias again today.
kay

GardenGirl,

I just moved from Zone 10 and even though sure, there are advantages to year-round heat and sun, there are lots of problems. First, consider all the things you cannot grow. (I always wanted to grow peonies but you can't in zone 10. Nurseries don't even sell them in zone 10!) And as everyone has said, you don't worry so much about frost but you definitely go outside a few times a year to find half your plants scorched. Especially in containers--if you can't commit to watering every day in summer, then no containers for you. Especially where I was (very dry).

But honestly here's the biggest advantage to a hot zone if you're a gardener: you don't get to enjoy the circle of life. You are in zone 3. You see seasons, you get to enjoy that satisfying feeling of waiting till a certain plant is ready, you get to see leaves fall off trees at the right time. You miss those things in year-round, season-less heat. So part of what makes gardening exciting is lost.

Last fall we moved from zone 10 (So Cal) to the Midwest (marginal zone 5--friends 45 minutes north of us swear they are a zone 4).

I can second (or third) the posts about the constant watering needed in the warm, dry climate of southern california. Yes, it was pretty mild temps, but you just would not believe how much water one needs to continually put in the ground to keep most plants growing! We did have a section of mediterranian/more drought resistant plants, but even they would need summer irrigation. We literally would go 8 months with NO RAIN. Here in the midwest, my kids still run outside when it rains and we just marvel at how water falls from the sky!

I find the comments on witnessing the cycle of life and appreciating the change of seasons to be very accurate also. In a zone where you can garden all year round, one can procrastinate far too easily. Without the seasonal deadlines of first frost, last frost, etc, the seasons kind of slip by and there is not the same sense of urgency that one must accomplish certain tasks by a specific deadline, or else lose the opportunity for the year. Of course, in CA there are different seasonal deadlines and time frames by which certain seeds or bulbs need to be planted, but they are not as definite as in this zone. One day in the garden in california I literally forgot what season it was! I had to think...wait, what month is it? Is this summer? It was funny, but kind of weird too. There is not as much variety as the months pass, whereas here, everytime I go outside, it seems as though something different is growing, blooming, declining, etc.

PEONIES!! YAY!! Peonies are a major motivation for me maintaining happiness in our new gardening zone. And no, I could not grow them in CA, nor could I in Arizona where we used to live. I am getting ready to order some and am having a heck of a hard time paring down my choices. On my short list: Do Tell, Festiva Maxima, bowl of Beauty, Eden's perfume, moonstone, Top Brass (I am ordering from Van Engelen, and its 3 per variety, so I am trying to pick only 4 varieties, for a total of 12 new peonies). Spring bulbs too! YAY for daffodils, tulips, crocus, allium, hyacinths, etc. Ok, so yes we could grow other bulbs, but ... well, it just wasn't the same.
When the snow melted this spring and I looked around and saw all the beautiful bulbs in the area, I felt a revitalization I never experienced before in CA. Of course, now as fall creeps up on us, I am feeling an incredibly desire to get as much done before it snows. i hope I survive, and gosh darn it, I gotta stop buying bulbs!!
I was pretty worried about such a drastic climate change for all of us, but so far, as we approach the end of our first year in the Midwest, I have been fairly pleased with the new gardening opportunities. Oh yes, and no black widows here!

Ohhh- peonies! An excellent reason to move. Oriental lilies, delphiniums, tulips, dogwoods, astilbe... ok- I'll stop listing all of the plants I adore and can't grow.
Renee

Hello!

For the most part I really do love where we live (especially after reading some of your posts - scorpions? Yikes!) However, being in the Pacific Northwest, not too far from Seattle, means that I deal with a lot of rain in the winter. Get this - the first winter my husband lived here (having moved from the midwest) it rained for 92 days straight. Bear in mind that rain in the Northwest doesn't mean that we get a shower here and there. Rain in the Northwest means slate gray skies and pelting drops for days on end. I have horses and every year, despite expensive work with tractors, sand, gravel, and coarse bark, their paddocks flood. We live on high, sandy acreage too, so we actually have less drainage issues than a lot of people I know. Plants that need good drainage (what doesn't, really?) have to be planted on berms or in raised beds.

It's September and we've had tons of rain already... today I went for a walk around a lake and got drenched. This is the time of year when I have to start telling myself how beautiful spring and summer are here. It takes some serious perserverance to get through the dark, wet winters, but then we do have absolutely gorgeous summers and I can grow almost anything.

Happy gardening to you all!

Hi Gardengirl
I live in Ohio where the saying is , "if you don't like the weather, wait ten minutes and it'll change". It seems to be true.

We've been having hail with the recent storms that blow through fast. Not much rain, which we need, but hail. It does lots of damage, but at least it's localized. We have several fields of soybeans and just one was damaged. I say "just one" but the damage to that one was significant.

Since we've lived at this house (32 years)we've had two MAJOR droughts, several floods, ice in the spring is not unheard of... one ice storm tore apart the trees, sounded like rifles being shot off as the limbs crashed to the ground all morning; we even sometimes get huge rain=or wind from hurricanes whose systems move up/over from the coast.

What is consistant in Ohio is the weather's inconsistency.
Last two summers, cool, rainy; this year started like that but turned hot, dry. You name it, it can happen here and sometimes in 24 hours.

Still, every spring I am excited to get outside, see what's coming up and plant some more. Hope springs eternal!

Gardengirl403 - I too get zone envy, especially this time of year, when I know that this weekend I need to haul my tropicals into the house. I need to turn the plant room back into a conservatory, even though my house is on the market. Here's what will make you feel better: Plant some tulips and daffodils this weekend. Most of the really warm climates can't grow them. Then wait and anticipate Spring, while you read seed catalogues by the fire, with a mug of hot chocolate (preferably spiked with Bailey's or Grand Marnier, or both!!)
And enjoy Fall - most of the mosquitos are dead!!

Nancy.