Christine

Don't give up girl! Ill bet that it won't look as bad in the morning and to someone else it will look fine. I hope today's rain has helped.
Les

Understand!!
I garden in Spring like a madwomen, then let everything go to pot in July and August, then when the first cool breeze hits me in Sept. off I go again. Of course, nothing ever gets accomplished, but I do it every year!
Mid-summer depression, hmmm. If you think about it, it is a very logical reaction to living in a hazy hot and humid environment more suited to pestilence and disease than to enjoyment of gardening.
Mid-summer depression, OH YEAH BABY, I understand indeed!!!

Christine, this is a cycle I have been contending with for 44 yrs. I understand your frustration. We often start up the season with near perfect growing conditions and then comes the hot and humids with no rain. Many times I used to have to come in and spend three or four hours hand watering because of the water ban. But in the end it always seemed to pay off. But I spent 7 yrs in Texas. This is a gardeners paradise compared to the weather there. Hang in there friend it's going to get better. Steve in Baltimore County.

Les, Rain?
Lest (pardon the pun) you forget, I live in something called an "atmospheric trough" and don't get a quarter of the rain everyone else does. That includes my neighbors 1/2 mile down the road. I get their run off.

Steven, it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. If I try to water manually, it's a good 7 hours and then I have to start all over again. With the soaker hoses, I don't have to do that, but the things not being soaked are shriveling. I've lost 3 Japanese Maples already.

My day lilies are looking great, though! :)

Sandra Christie? My pestilence is rabbits. Those above-ground rats snip everything off to a nub. Haven't figure out how to deter them on 3 landscaped acres, but have to do something. Sometime. "Maybe next year," she said, falling heavily onto the couch.

A still-depressed Christine

Well, it has been rough so far this year for water. All I can say is...Think Xeric! Maybe not always the prettiest options, but definitely (once established) not needing anywhere near the water. Other than that, my perception of time says that September will be here tomorrow. :-D

Hang in there!

Jen

Hang in there, Christine!

I go through the same thing every year, although the malaise appears to have set in rather early this year. It will get better, I promise. And in the meantime, re-think your garden plans. Xeric might be the way to go. Check out High Country Gardens for ideas.

I've been Xeric-izing for a couple of years. I still have things that just need water, such as hosta (which I love).
Nandina you can't kill. Ornamental grasses? Can't kill 'em. Shrubs? eh.

I'm going to get rid of everything that struggles this year. At least the stuff that isn't hosta or heuchera.

Look forward to a HUGE Christine Dig this fall.

So there.
C.

Usually it's the weeds and the groundhogs that tick me off more than the watering. But I only have a quarter acre. This year I have two of the four main beds on soaker hoses with mulch over them, so I just hook em up and let em run for a couple of hours now and then if it hasn't rained.

I've also taken to mixing moisture crystals into the soil when I plant ferns or hydrangeas. And I have two really boggy very clayey areas, one by the downspout that gets saturated with runoff for days, and one at the low end of a bed. The boggy areas get the moisture loving plants. The rest of the yard gets stuff that can tolerate being fairly dry, or else it goes into the soaker hose beds.

Another option is to get into ponding. You stick the hose in and fill up to the top and you're done. It's either watered or it's not. Period!

Sometimes I think Westminster has a clear dome over it like in some scifi futuristic movie, because it often rains all around us but not here! I feel your pain. Hang in there!

Christine,
I've never met you, but I suspect that you might be one of those curmudgens who will NEVER give up, but talks as though she might do so at any moment!!! Usually the last one standing when all is said and done. I bet your garden is gorgeous despite all the talk of pestilence, and drudgery.
You can get to September, of course you can!

Christine, Eric here. Yeah, I am in exactly the same position as you, and I have to work 5 days a week, but i refuse to give up. We put too much work into these gardens to let them die. Some things I'm going to have to let go, but there are other plantings and flowers that I just refuse to let go of. so, I use the soakers here throughout the day and night (oh, please ,well, stay full!), and put about 90 mintues or two hours in about three nights a week and then one workday on the weekend.

Don't get depressed, or else come on down here and have an iced tea with me.
Eric

You're wonderful, Eric. And if you're hanging in there with all you're dealing with and taking care of? Ok, I'll quit whining. They say my well, which is artesian, comes from somewhere out of Pennsylvania. I figure they'll never miss it up there.

I do turn my hoses on overnight or for at least 6 hours a turn. I try to rotate them.

I was out yesterday covering things with towels and blanket tents. I took a little inventory of what's Xeric and what's not. Ironically, once established, much of what I have should be able to handle this. It's just so darned extra hot here.

Ah well. I'll just focus on my wanna-be shade gardens and keep them wet. Luckily, many more hosta than people think can take full sun as long as their roots are wet. I'm here to tell you that hellebores can also take full sun. The trees over my shade gardens along my fence line keep drying out and dying. Big, old, junk cherries.

Ok, I slipped into whining....
God I hate the end of June through the end of September. Of course, if I still lived in Michigan where I grew up? I'd hate Labor day to the 4th, since it can snow during that entire span. Kill me. I'm moving to North Carolina.
Mosquitos don't bite me.

C.

So I should be grateful for all of that shade I so regularly complain about? We didn't have rain here for 7 weeks this spring, and I commented and you all were having regular rain. Well, now I'm getting good soakings once a week! The 4th of July dropped 3+ inches as measured by the trug I had left in the backyard. I have more than a dozen soaker hoses that I 'planted' when I installed the beds. But since most beds are established, I only run the soakers along the front and in one shade bed that has a few water hogs (like Rodgersia and Ligularia) and in it.

My watering time is spent on patio pots. Way too many potted brugs and salvias and fuschias. My agaves are easy though!

Remember how you felt in today's heat when you look out on your garden this winter and can't wait for spring :)

I always feel like giving up. That's the reason the pad I started to build in the spring of '06, for a shed, is still only half finished.

Today, I was out to clear a section around my septic tank access for a flower bed, but instead of finishing it, I'm sitting here thinking... Got a blister on my foot... I don't want to go back out in this heat!

I'm thinking of consolidating beds, although I just started a huge new one last fall (into December), and 2 new ones around trees this spring.

It'll be plastic flowers, fake trees, maybe some fake English ivy, and only something that surivives this year. Period.

The shade beds that need so much water? They're going under those pergolas, getting soaker hoses, and I'm done with them. Ironically, some of my heuchera are proving to be full sun and not needing a ton of water. These are my kinds of plants.

I lost another Japanese Maple.

Kill me.
Christine

Christine,

I know exactly how you feel. I have had not more than sprinkles since before June. Every great thunder storm has bypassed my yard. I'm watering like crazy to keep the important stuff alive.

And this is the year I picked to take a table at the local farmers market in Kensington to sell my extras from wintersowing. This means I have to water the small pots every evening to keep them in shape to sell on Saturday morning.

I plan to stop having my table after next week if we don't get some rain.

And I can't even plant cactus since all I have is dry shade, not dry sun. I'm considering going Tucson and just spray painting some of my yard a nice green and forgetting it until I get rain.

Brugmansias in hanging baskets. Portulacas. Yuccas. And green spray paint. That's my landscaping plan for next year. (Joking - I think.)

I feel your pain. Spent from 4:30 to 9:30 last night running in and out to turn the soaker hoses on and off. This was after watering plants all day for a living. And it was hot as heck too.

But the soakers are a whole lot better than standing there with a water wand being eaten by mosquitos and flies. I found an extra soaker in the basement that you can flip over and turn into a sprinkler hose. I ran it through the shade border where the ferns and hydrangeas were gasping. It is supposed to blend in with the bed - how dayglow green with yellow stripes blends in is beyond me. But it made a nice misty shower effect that I think the plants enjoyed.

Going on vacation this coming week - will have a tangle of soaker hoses on timers running every few days. And the outdoor deck and porch pots will have little wicky devices that help keep them watered. Of course, if I do that, it will pour rain the whole time.

Sheila,
Have a great vacation away from work.

The water plants you gave me from the swap are doing great in the floating garden planter.

I agree...go to water gardening in the pond. Throw a few fish in and it's good to go.

Bonnie

Hey Bonnie!

One of my not-struggling plants is the yarrow 'Red Tapestry.'
However, it's white and blue-y pink.
Go figure.

Christine

Bonnie, thanks! A whole week with no plants to water at all. Aaah. About all that grows down on the Outer Banks is the oat grass on the dunes, and some gaillardia and the occasional cactus.

I do public beds in two places, the library and swimming pool in my neighborhood. I had put some new stuff in both places a couple of weeks ago that I actually _bought_ (this is pretty much a rare event for me). Checked on them yesterday and this beautiful light pink phlox and sweet pastel lantana looked almost dead at the library and these completely absolutely adorable dwarf plants (lady's mantle, goatsbeard, and rue) were lying completely flat at the pool. I felt like giving up :/. Like I had doomed them to die and they should have been put in a "better" gardeners hands. It's then that I have to remind myself how often the beds look really pretty vs how often they look pretty awful and come to the same conclusion. More often than not they look nice and add beauty to my neighborhood.

Hi Christine,

I'll trade ya luggin' hoses for swating mosquitos and peacocks, who between the two of them will eat anything in sight! Glad to see you're still trying, I'm just wading through weeds! My purple clover is still kicking and thriving in it's shady location.

Hopefully your plants make it to the fall swap because they always have a place in my garden!

Lettssee

I'd actually love a peacock or two. Chickens, too. However, we have fox out here along with dogs that get loose.
I will have a lot of hosta to share, I think, and some things that are just too picky for out here.

There it goes.
C.

Never, never, never give up. I feel your pain, but if Eric can do it you can do it too. I want to it next spring, I bet it'll all be back and great. I am water a lot -- what can I say, and the hoses are a pain, but at least we are allowed to water. Send me an e-mail if you need reassurance. You have come so far !!!! Hugs, gardengranma