You poor thing! I hope it gets better soon. I hope you won't mind that I'll try to count my blessings, as I haul the hose around in the heat. You must both be exhausted. Keep your chin up. I know it's discouraging, but you're right. The days are getting shorter. Get well soon to "Mr. Melissa ". Lisa

Let me add my best wishes along with those of Lisa to your DH. Of course I can so relate to your complaining about this disgusting weather; it's the same here in Tuscany. So frustrating, too; once again the weather sites talk of possible rain for the 25th. I'm struggling to not get my hopes up, since it seems like so often they predict rain, but then nothing happens at my land; just elsewhere. I, too, check the forecasts obsessively, hoping almost against hope that the weather will change radically,that we'll get autumn rains early,etc, etc, etc. Like Alana, I love rain. Heat and drought totally exhaust me. One thing I want to add: be careful doing that lugging of water; it's easy to hurt oneself doing that (guess how I know this, lol?). Better to make many trips only carrying small amounts,and buy a lot of shade cloth to shade the ones you're forced to water this way, keeping watering down to the absolute minimum necessary for survival,rather than risking injury. Also, I'm not sure if this is true, but I have this suspicion that maybe-just maybe-the plants don't need quite so much now as they did back in June, since now they're pretty close to a sort of dormancy.

"At least the days are getting shorter"...

Very tough times for you, Melissa, and bart too, especially with all the physical work you're forced to do just to keep the plants alive. The obsessive watching of the weather forecasts, and then the terrible disappointment when the rain passes you by (for the most part it ended up in the hills we could see not far away, many curses on our part), is an achingly familiar memory. However, we still had water we could use, although it didn't do more than keep the roses alive while they looked like h*ll. The drip watering has helped greatly in that respect, but we are looking forward to a very hot and dry winter, and psychologically it's daunting, and after that I'm sure there will be restrictions. I'm very much afraid that this is a precursor of worse things to come, although I hope in the short run we'll still all get lucky and have some good rain. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you.

Melissa - so glad that your neighbors are letting you use water from their pond! It sounds as if that is making a huge difference. It does sound exhausting - what you are having to do. Stay safe.

I did not realize that you normally get rain in the Summer. We never have any rain here in the summer, so don't look for it or worry if it does not rain. We start looking for rain in the second half of October, when our "winter rains" usually start. Even last year, when we got over 5 feet of rain in the WInter, it did not start until Oct.

Ingrid - how much rain did your area get last Winter? I know that there were areas of Calif. which stayed in a drought condition, even though the rest of the state was drowning.

Jackie

We've had good rain this summer; I wish I could share some with those of you who need it.

The nice thing is that it has been cooling off after the rain... about 1pm it was 93F, but after a t-storm that's just ending, it's down to 73F, 3 hours later. The sun's out and the humidity is high, so it will probably be more sauna-like soon before sunset.

Supposedly, the climate change forecasters have said that our area of the southeast is due to become more of a rain forest, while other parts of the country (and world) become more arid. It's too soon to say if they're correct, but it does seem that the extended drought conditions affecting other areas have been absent here.

Alana, I didn't know y'all were having a dry summer; you're only a few hours' drive from here... it's usually fairly dry here early summer, but once the heat kicks in, we get afternoon or evening thundershowers most days.

It seems so unusual to have that 20-degree drop in temperature after rain, though- what I think of as "normal" is that rain at this time of year just makes things muggier, not significantly cooler. I'm not complainig, but it's odd.

We watched Chasing Coral on Netflix the other day; anyone who thinks that climate change isn't real should watch it. Depressing, really.

Melisa, bart, et al., I hope your autumn rains are early, and that things cool off for you soon. Please take care, and don't overdo things.

Virginia

As I thought, probability of rain now down to basically zilch. Thank you for your solidarity, Virginia. Sad to say, anymore for me just doing normal admin seems to be "overdoing"; how can a woman express the feeling that she feels "unmanned"? It's an old-fashioned term; I don't know any modern equivalent in English. In Italian "mi cascano le braccia"...I guess it is just plain exhauston...

bart, I do worry about you. Having a garden around the house and a ready water supply makes it possible for me to work in short spurts and stop when I'm tired, at least when it's cool enough to go out. What you're having to do to care for your roses sounds like something that a reasonably young and strong man should be doing, or a strong woman in very good health. If you have a health emergency when you're out there, is there even someone nearby who could see what's happening and come to your aid? Hopefully you carry a cell phone. I can well imagine what your roses mean to you, but are you hurting yourself in the process of caring for them? I don't mean to preach, but you've mentioned your physical state often enough to make me think there is something to worry about. Just food for thought......

Jackie, I think we had about 12 inches of rain from October through February, with more rain in March. I know it's nothing compared to your rain totals but for us it was a life saver, although the Sierra snow fall and the precipitation in the north that is channeled down here is what really matters. Of course we have no way of knowing what future years will bring us, or not.

Aw, that's sweet of you to think about me, Ingrid! Thank you; I do appreciate it. I do try to be careful and I do have a cell phone. Because of the wretched heat I only leave the house at five PM or so, and wind up staying very, very late, getting home around midnight,so I only get to bed around 2-3 AM. This lifestyle is in itself exhausting; it works for young people, but for those of us who are middle-aged,it's bad news. Lowers your seratonin levels, etc,and since it's so tiring I can only do it 2-3 times per week, so I can't even re-program my circadian rhythym or whatever. But it's the only way to do it,living far away. Experience has taught me that trying to get there early in the morning doesn't work; by 8/ 9AM the sun is already too high,and in any case,there's no wind in the morning out there. I think what I do/did in the past would be tiring even for a younger person. I guess I do qualify as a strong woman,but I fear that these arthritis issues have undermined my general health ,and I also think that I'm having a lot of trouble accepting the diminishment. That is not good. I know for a fact that I am lucky and have no right to complain and must learn to accept this with grace and dignity, and I am trying. I really do have to change my ways. Last summer I told myself to aim to put in only a few new plants so I wouldn't have to do so much watering, but I failed miserably,lost all control, and this year have wound up with over 100 things to water; more than ever before I think: utterly shameful! How did it happen? For one thing, being scared about my hip made me really over-do with moving plants (" better do it now, while I still can!"..).only I wound up making matters worse for myself ,not realizing that I just can't push myself like that anymore. Then that loathsome mango-head won the presidential election,and like many people I was upset,and sought to comfort myself getting plants...BAD MOVE.So now I'm paying the price for stupidity and lack of self-control. The important thing is to learn from our mistakes, so when fall comes I have to be careful to limit the amount of plants I put in-for real this time.

Once again, thank you for worrying about me. Who knows? Maybe articulating this stuff, here on Internet even (being in some ways the opposite of private?), will help me to come to terms with reality.

That sounds like quite a lot of plants, bart. I went from about 100 to 50 and it has made life so much easier, and I'm not even lugging water around like you. Are there plants that are not doing well or that you don't particularly love? It's been such a relief to me to have only half the number to care for. I know what you mean about accepting limitations. I can do much less this year than the year before, and that's not easy to accept. Of course you wonder what the next year will bring. However, I know people with worse problems who are younger than I am, so I'm trying to see the glass half full.

Yes Virginia that week long of rain from maybe a tropical thing, I can't remember, was the first rain we had gotten since Spring. Our afternoon storms just finally started a week or two ago? This year I've seen more rain than last year that is for certain..last summer I don't think we got any rain all summer. I know alot of times the wind will pick up, we will even get clouds,, than nothing, the rain will pass us by..I know one time a summer or two ago my husband was fishing at the river, barely 5 minutes from the house, and it was pouring down raining on him, and the sun was shining at the house. It's so weird how the weather is...it does what it wants that's for sure.

Alana, we went out walking the other night after it had rained, and we noticed that the street a block away wasn't wet... it rained on our street, but not a block away. Yes, fickle, fickle rain clouds. I'm glad you're getting some of the wet stuff now. Usually spring & early summer are dry here also, but we got lucky this year. Which was great since I wasn't able to do much after my surgery, and felt guilty asking my husband to water my too many plants...

Virginia

Thanks for the solidarity, folks! DH is doing well; in fact he begged the doctor to release him early, and the doc agreed, so DH is coming home tomorrow. He was driving them crazy there in the ward as he went crazy himself with the forced inactivity, so possibly that was an influence.

Bart, your weather frustrations are mine. There's a possibility of rain tonight--at least we're getting very handsome clouds out of it--and another chance in a few days. Perhaps we'll both get a shower. DD and I went today to see DH in the hospital at Parma. We took the train from the nearest station, then walked through town, taking in a couple of churches and crossing the Parco Ducale. It was so hot. By the time we finally got back home again, we were covered in salt and sadly dehydrated. The weather is debilitating for both of us; I'm so looking forward to weather that won't force me to get up at 5 a.m. if I don't want to die of heat outdoors.

I'm sorry for your physical difficulties but don't have any helpful advice (I did take note of your counsel to me). Part of it is that this is just a particularly hard year.

Jackie, our summers are dry, and we can go weeks and even months without rain, but occasional thunderstorms do come along.

Ingrid, I remember your frustration with the drought very well. I'm sorry your area didn't get a thorough soaking when the drought did finally break for much of the state.

Yes,I think that this is a particularly hard year,Melissa. Also, I don't know about you with your DD, but I'm finding the fact that my DS has now officially graduated from high school a wee bit "traumatic" (LOL) for me!!! So that's more emotional stuff in the mix.And I think it's just plain true that this kind of weather is debilitating to an extreme,for a LOT of people,even worse for those of us that have to struggle to keep young plants alive. Alana and vmr, we get that frustrating effect, too,of rain coming only in what Italians call "leopard spots" (macchie di leopardo)-and it seems like my garden is always cut out,lol! But it does drive you crazy: forecast gets your hopes on the rise,you try to fight it, but "hope springs eternal", right? And then said hopes are crushed when it rains BUT NOT IN YOUR GARDEN. Maddening.

Ingrid, I do plan to move/remove over-crowded roses this fall. I plan to just cut down my huge ReneAndre, not try to move it, because that is just the sort of thing I've gotta stop doing. It's a shame, in a way, but the rose is just in the wrong spot, way too vigorous and sprawly for where I put it,and the overall effect when it was in bloom was not dazzling. I still hope to dig up a few for Melissa. There are others that I want to move, but plan to pot up any that have root systems small enough to make that practical. I hope to be able to restrain myself with my pot ghetto, too,and for the most part only plant out those that are too big to be kept in pots.Another resolution: only new plants to add other than the roses mentioned above will be ones that basically don't require constant watering in their first year: lavenders, ceoanthus,rosemary,etc. Because, seriously, I think the absolute worst thing for me is trying to water during the summer. Remember, like Melissa, I don't water established plants ; I couldn't ; even if I had running water out there it'd be a sin to use all that good drinking water on plants. My garden is just too big, and the whole concept of it is to make something that will be more or less self-sustaining (i.e.,once mature will not require a whole lot of fuss.) The whole "thing" about roses for me is that 1) wild ones are weeds at my land, so I know that roses are adapted to my garden 2) the fact of the existence of all these "found" roses and "cemetary" roses leads me to think that growing roses with minimal fuss can indeed be done. Mine is not a suburban home garden ,so my goals are perforce a bit different from those of many forum members.

Bart, I think it's quite interesting that you and I both arrived at the idea of a garden that would, once established, be able to sustain itself on what Nature supplies, and apparently following similar lines of thought. It's not that common a project.

I was wondering about how your DS was doing, and you with him: even good adolescents can be exasperating at times. DD is a happy gal. She's remarkably easy to get along with--temperamentally she takes after her dad, and thank goodness--and for many reasons I love her company. High school final exams--her whole last year--were very demanding, and for a few days afterwards she was practically in a coma from exhaustion. Once she recovered she began to draw, with intervals to goof off on the computer and go on an occasional walk with me, and that's what she's been doing since. DD likes being at home with her drawing equipment and music; she has little taste for going out. She's enrolled for university starting September, continuing to live at home, so that's taken care of.

bart, I like the notion of 'leopard spots'... I only wish you didn't have all those near-misses when what you need is rain.

I know it's somewhat heretical to point this out, but many roses can live in large pots pretty much indefinitely. They'll probably look best if the dirt gets changed out (refreshed) every few years, and some root pruning may also help, but I know of someone who grows roses that belonged to his late wife, and I'm pretty sure he hasn't done anything to those roses aside from occasional weeding and an occasional handful of fertilizer. "Smith's Parish", 'Climbing Cecile Brunner' a NOID pink Tea, a NOID Noisette and 'Mutabilis' are among those that have been in large pots for at least 12 years and look great. 'Climbing Cecile' is the only one that gets pruned, and that's to keep her out of the nearby garden path. I mention this in case you have a terrace or other space by your house that could house a few large pots of roses...

And doesn't "container garden" sound so much less pejorative than "pot ghetto"?

I don't know when you can reasonably expect cooler weather there, but we're now only 2 months from the autumn equinox... Fingers crossed that you'll be able to get creative, and think of some ways to make things easier on yourself. I like the idea of a self-sustaining garden, but if you have over 100 plants to water, that doesn't sound sustainable. I can relate; I have many plants I have no real plans for, and if this had been a dry summer here, I'm sure that problem would've taken care of itself, and I'd be feeling like a plant murderess. I'm certainly not judging you, just worrying that you're trying to do too much without help.

Here's to rain drops, rather than leopard spots,

Virginia

O, Virginia, I'm definitely "trying to do too much without help",but that's been going on for years, lol! "Life is reached by over-reaching",and all that. I'm grateful for the opportunity for personal growth that I've had by doing all this stuff on my own,but now I'm getting some clear signs that it's time to re-evaluate. Clearly, I made a big mistake this past fall/winter, let things get out of hand, too optimistic that the weather would meet me half-way, etc. One hundred "baby" plants to water is about 50 too many,I'd say. After almost 2 months of heat and drought (only one good rain ),my energy is failing me; I only went out there once this past week; hope to go again this Monday,hope that most things will survive,etc,etc,etc.As I said before, like Melissa, I only water new plants; the established ones are doing OK. The "unsustainable" thing was to put in too many new guys. I guess I still dream that one day I'll be able to open it to the public,eventually get some kind of support for the project from city hall, etc.; I guess it's time that I start pushing things more towards that. I still have some ugly uncultivated space that I want to fill,but after that, no more expanding.

Pot culture! ( no, I don't mean the kind that ex-hippies enjoy, lol) We have this nice terrace that someday I'd like to "landscape" with a container garden, but I don't feel I'm ready to embark on a new project like that just now. Growing roses in pots seems to me to be very, very high-maintenance. I think just about all the bare-root roses I potted up back when I recieved them last winter have already totally out-grown their pots and need to be moved up to the next size. That will require a lot of work-and money, too- to pay for potting soil,for one thing. I don't know how your acquaintance does it(and all the other people who manage to grow roses in pots, for that matter) ; frankly it seems to me that one would need to change the soil once a year at least in order to keep roses reasonably happy in pots. I think that maintaining a container garden of roses would be do-able only if one didn't have any other garden obligations. They also require an absurd quantity of water,needing to be watered almost every day-and this is drinking water from the aqueduct I'm talking about. Luckily for me there's no watering ban (yet???) here in Tuscany; if there was these things couldn't survive. Instead, in open ground, I'm finding that roses resist drought very well. I'm more worried about the baby trees I put in than I am about the roses.

"Here's to rain drops not leopard spots1" I'll drink to that, lol!

The only advice I can give is shade from cut branches or umbrellas or shade cloth and put on as much mulch as you can to help the plants hold on. Drought tests the flower gardener terribly. Hopes for a wet winter.

Really wondering where the universe's Complaints Department is. The rain came yesterday. It rained to the north of us in the plain; to the south of us in the mountains; to the east of us in town; but here, not one drop fell. Back to my mantra: no rain in the two weeks' forecast, but the days are getting shorter. Hard to believe that it's still only July.

They probably had to close that Department down because the lines were too long,LOL! But boy can I relate,Melissa; that leopard-spot stuff drives me so crazy; it really does seem like my garden is never the area that gets the rain...grrrrrrr.... I second kittymoonbeam: hopes for a wet, wet winter,and autumn as well, while we're at it.