I know how you feel. We have had such much rain , I just yanked out a bunch of stuff yesterday. I grow succulents and I gave up , brought them in and bought grow lights. Next year I am slowing down my madness , at least that’s what I say now.

Yeah, it has been a shocker of a year Rob. Still, we know what to do right? Back to first principles, break out the seed lists (I am spending a lot of time harvesting and cleaning my own seeds to counter the misery of this challenging year...and have little pots of seedlings to fuss over)

Are we twins separated at birth, campanula?

you garden.. because if you didnt .. you'd have nothing to do all winter.. and probably kill yourself due to seasonal affective disorder ... lol ...

ken

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=seasonal+affective+disorder&t=ffcm&ia=about

I think we all feel this way at times. I know I did several times this summer.

Right now I’m seeing grasshoppers up the ying yang. Everywhere I go it seems...they come springing out! Quite startling and amazing how far they can jump...

It's been the very worst gardening year of my entire life due to all you've mentioned plus more. We garden because we have to. It's what we enjoy. It's just that this year sucked bigtime. Even my container plants are suffering from too much rain and no sun. They have caterpillars (!) eating the flowers for the first time ever, too.

I found a guy who weeded my entire fenced-in garden. Took him 7 hours over 2 days. Lovely! Now every bit of soil is covered with a carpet of tiny weed seedlings I'll have to scuffle hoe out (or I can have him come back to weed them out.) Not enjoyable and downright scary since my garden never had a weed problem till this year

Gardening is very unenjoyable this summer. And now we have daytime mosquitoes. Getting old doesn't help either...

It's in our DNA. Just as alcoholics crave liquor, race car drivers crave speed, gardeners crave the feeling of soil in their hands and seeing beauty grow from a little seed or start.

Every year is different. Sometimes you get a year that really tries your patience and you may find you spend less time gardening with less enthusiasm for awhile. But more often than not, in my experience, a bad year is eventually followed by a better year and you feel that old enthusiasm spring up again.

We had about 7 years of winter moths eating the foliage on all our mature Maples and the shrubs in the yard. Caterpillars and webs hanging everywhere in the spring doing a lot of damage. Thankfully one of our Maples was very dense, because if you stood under it last year and looked up you could see all the dead branches, but the tree has enough canopy left that it looks normal.

This year suddenly there were no winter moths. No damage to the foliage. I have no idea why. The winter moths may come back another year, but at least our Maples had a breather this year and are recovering. It was a pleasure to see foliage without holes in it.

I had just about stopped growing lilies, due to Lily Leaf Beetle. I dug them out and got rid of them, but I missed a few and they came back. And I was happy to see them and added more, with the promise to myself I would be more vigilant at removing them. Last year and this year, suddenly I see no LLBeetles at all and the Lilies were beautiful.

This year, we had our share of challenges, still, but it was okay. A groundhog, a rabbit, voles or moles ate most of my bleeding hearts and crocus last winter, the town had a total ban on outdoor watering this summer...lol. We installed three rain barrels. Still, we got a lot of pleasure from watching the rabbit eating clover in the lawn, the groundhog, showed up in the spring then I didn't see him the rest of the season. A robin built a nest in the Holly outside my window and I was able to watch two chicks from egg to leaving the nest. A hummingbird visited the Cleome, Agastache and Salvias I planted just for him.

You just keep plugging away and wait it out. Adapt. Enjoy what is there to enjoy.

"And now we have daytime mosquitoes."

I have more bitey bugs this year than I have ever seen before- all times of day and they bite through clothing. I love my house and I love my gardening but if I ever move it will be because of the bugs.

If I bailed on Florida because of hurricanes I can bail on Kentucky because of bugs.

Other folks in MA have reported a noticeable decline of lily beetles. I wish that were so here.

I keep yelling at the moles to go attack my grass, but they don't listen. I don't want them to decline, so I'm not sure what I'll do. I'm not killing critters if I can avoid it. Usually.

I am not ready to give up but I do admit to being tired and over it all at this point in the season. We had an unseasonably warm (for us) July and are in the midst of our standard summer drought so watering is an ongoing chore, especially with the number of containers I coddle. But my biggest issue is the amount of deer predation my garden suffered this summer. Other than my sweet peas (which they ate pretty much to the ground) they really didn't destroy anything but they prevented a whole lot of stuff from blooming or blooming fully. Who knew deer liked flowers so well??

And then summer is my busiest business season so I am pooped and ready now for things to start winding down and for fall to begin to make an appearance.

Bug pressure has been insane this year, which is surprising considering the bizarre cold "spring" and the super heat wave we had in early summer. Would have figured the bugs gave up and went on vacation, but they are out there making a concerted effort at destroying every leaf and flower they find. And yes, the mosquitoes are getting really bad now.

But I've also had a record number of monarchs and swallowtails, a ton of hummingbirds, and even hummingbird moths flitting around when sitting on the deck. It's giving me a bit of second wind to get the garden ready for fall. I'm sure it gets better from here on out!

This has been by far the worst season for me. At this point I don't even want to go outside, there's so much rot, mildew, spots and bugs. I just venture outside to pick tomatoes and snip some herbs, and run back inside to scratch the bites. The weeds are taking over but it will have to wait.

We have bugs I never knew existed! Even my cats are covered with scabs and their ears are raw. Lucy (the smart one) quit going outside and spends her days following me around and whining. I hear you, kitty... I'm also waiting for this hellish summer to be over...

I used to put Off on my dogs’ ears to keep the biting flies off so they could enjoy their time outside.

Weeds. Weeds. Weeds. It's overwhelming.

Crabgrass has exploded in the lawn, with all the heat and a water ban.

Ok so like there isn’t enough for the grasshoppers to destroy outside?

Now they are hanging out on my doors just waiting....

WE are definitely in Camp's side of devastation. with 1.5" since May of water. I had storms miss us last night by 1/2 a mile. So frustrating having it slide so close. We got .02 of the wet stuff. Everyday seem to be above 100º. I do have a bunch of pots of seed grown plants waiting for a wet fall to be planted. Hell, I got 6 tomatoes and 15 trees and shrubs just waiting.and flats of small 4" perrenial wildflowers. 100's of Echeiandia texensis. They are growing out there but the deer are so hungry, they are chomping on everything. Even the salvias and the yuccas. First year ever that they have gone for the salvias.

I am not giving up, I am on a hiatus. and I do have lowered expectations. The color green looks damn artificial and painful to the eyes right now.

We had a similar situation with lack of rain for 2 out of the last 4 years. It would be "showers" expected and many communities bordering our town would get rain and we'd still be dry. I started to think we had some sort of dome over our town. [g]. Thankfully, this year, we've had an adequate amount of rain, at least in the spring and early summer. Then it was dry for weeks and now it's rain every couple of days. And we've had downpours which is very satisfying. But during that dry month - we had installed rain barrels and that helped a lot to be able to just put a 2 gallon watering can directly over plants that were struggling to keep them going until it rained.

So, I hope you find eventually you end up with the rain you need.

It is though, scary to think climate change may produce more permanent changes to our climate. And as some people have reported too much rain - it seems that climate change is about dysregulation that produces the wrong amount and not what is needed.

It is indeed about dysregulation. As I understand it, the jet stream is kept in place by the contrast between polar cold and tropical warmth. But as the temperatures in the Arctic get higher, the jet stream becomes erratic and weather systems get blocked, instead of moving along the weather highway. For me it meant 17" of rain in July (highest recorded) drawn from the tropics.

I think the next decades are going to be very unpredictable, with new weather patterns emerging and records being broken.

Yep...we have broke many records here already just in the last few years. Things are getting scary...

I don't blame any of this on Climate change. Texas has always had droughts and we have a pattern of having bad droughts after a bad hurricane year (last year). So I was warned about this drought last October. By the way Arctic is now having a cooler summer. Ocean temps are dropping in the Atlantic except for that bit off the East Coast and narrow belt to England.The tropics from Africa to the Americas is cool. Gulf is mostly cool..Ocean Temps all over the world are comparatively cooler this year. Tropic Oceans are mostly cooler. Indian Ocean, Atlantic and most of the Paciffic (not all) Greenland North Atlantic is much cooler and so is the Artic Ocean compared to last year. Just saying. The heatwave of the west coast should break and get DAMN cold just about the time the cool down in the plains ends the summer with a heatwave.

The waters around the arctic are cooler because the ice is melting at record speed. The rest of ocean temperatures are actually warmer than usual. Do you really trust this website? Just saying, our Russian friends have been busy lately ;)

This site has won many scientific awards. I have followed Joe Bastardi for years and he has been right more times than most. Russophobia is such mass hysteria.

Hmmmm....the opinions of Joe Bastardi and his 'predictions' and views on climate change are pretty mixed. And I would say most are overwhelming negative about his thoughts on climate change. Just saying............

This is so sad... People used to talk about the weather because it would always guarantee a nice, civil conversation... Now this topic is off limits, and no amount of smiley emoticons will help... I'm out of this thread guys, this is too depressing... Politics, religion, weather... what's next? I hope not plants...

http://psc.apl.uw.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2.1.png

The longer term trends say otherwise, Mara. Whilst I agree, Russophobia is somewhat over the top (in the US), the trends are not going towards any increase in volume, density or temperature in the arctic...although rise in July has been followed by another decrease in volume.

He explains most things in weather patterns and does not jump to alarmist positions arbitrarily. Due to this , people dislike him.. He actually bridges the gap between the two camps if you listen to him. He sees water vapor as much more a climate modulator than Carbon. After a series of super el niños, the base line temperature drop between them has climbed because so much water vapor has been injected into the atmosphere. That is his explanation. He is very interested to see if this coming el nino will have a reduced baseline after that is lower or higher. He also studies patterns and uses analog years and historical observations going back over a hundred years to explain much of what people jump to the climate change umbrella. I like to watch him because he sticks to science and patterns. He runs a paid weather service because he is often correct. Investors and industry use him a lot. I never used an emoticon and I have remained civil.

@ camp, Surge in Ice Volume to 3 highest 16 years.... I choose to live in hope. I keep my eye to facts not projected trends because with models, things can be warped by how computer models are programmed. For example, The IPCC is a political entity that has used misrepresentation and bad programming of models before. Declaring data that wipes out 2 historical warm periods warmer than today. I decided they were full of hogwash with that peice of malarky. I will be watching how far this cooling of the oceans take us.I am sorry to have opened this off topic can of worms. I am a firm believer in cycles. The Russian comment must have rubbed me wrong.

Well, around here we've had colder colds, hotter hots, much more rain, less snow, longer droughts, hurricanes where there weren't any before, floods every year. We've broken records on winter temps, rain amounts, increased tick activity. So I think for here, the climate has been very unstable and changing.

I know the glaciers are melting fast. I've seen them.

It's what happens on earth every 100,000 years or so. My garden shows it! The change in plant and animal life shows it, too.

Mara, I used the emoticon ;) to indicate that I was joking (wink, wink, smile?) You can imagine I was taken aback by being called a Russophobe and hysterical -- still feel like I was punched in the gut a bit.

So it is OK to make bad jokes about Russians. Switch the wording to "Black" or "jewish" and see how it reads. Russians in this country are being victimized by such anti russian sentiment these days. It is very fashionable. They are being arrested and dragged in for nothing, No , I did not find it funny.

I was ridiculing the anti-Russian sentiment! I was actually born in a neighboring country, speak fluent Russian and work with a few folks from Russia (I work for an international organization). I was so upset after your comments that I called one of them. He was laughing and told me to forget it, but I feel like crying now. I was not made to be on social media -- the scolding, name-calling... What gives people the right to do that? The anonymity?

Nobody I know gardens, so it has been a lot of fun talking to you guys, exchanging ideas, rants and raves. But now I have to go back to puttering around the yard alone, talking to my cats and plants -- I know they understand me. I'm too thin-skinned and too old for this.

To benefit from social media in this day and age, you do have to make a real effort to avoid controversy. It helps not to take things personally. Social media is all about each individual expressing opinions. Allowing others to have an opinion that is different than yours is a necessity, without getting defensive. Or the next thing you know the insults and the hurt feelings are flying. We can all disagree without being disagreeable. So maybe we can all agree, that weather and Russia aside, we could go back to discussing gardening. If not on this thread on the next one.

Lesson learned! My mistake was to stray away from plant talk. You spend time on this forum and feel like you know people, but everybody brings their own outside baggage. The key is not to open it even a tiny bit... No more crazy carp from me :)))