August 2018, Week 4, Hotter than Hell
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
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Okiedawn OK Zone 7
5 years agoOklaMoni
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3 Weeks Earlier than Normal Bloom, what will be left in August?
Comments (35)This is a great thread and it is one I have been following earnestly since it began. Here is what is still blooming in my garden as of August 13, in no particular order: Lycoris chinensis Patrinia scabiosifolia Verbena bonariensis Echinacea 'PowWow Wild Berry' Calamintha nepetoides Allium 'Millenium' Allium 'Summer Beauty' Allium nutans 'Pam Harper' Agastache 'Blue Blazes' Agastache 'Blue Fortune' Agastache 'Golden Jubilee' Agastache 'Purple Haze' Hibiscus 'Summer Storm' Hibiscus 'Plum Crazy' Lilium speciosum album Lilium speciosum rubrum Phlox 'David' Phlox 'Old Cellarhole' Phlox 'Jeana' Phlox 'Caspian' Phlox 'Peppermint Twist' Phlox 'Mile High Pink' Helenium 'Mardi Gras' Geranium 'Rozanne' Geranium wlassovianum Rosa 'Quietness' Rosa 'Jude the Obscure' Rosa 'Rose de Rescht' Silphium perfoliatum Gladiolus 'Carolina Primrose' Gladiolus 'Bolivian Peach' Gladiolus 'Boone' Thalictrum 'Splendide' Thalictrum 'Hewitt's Double' Perovskia 'Blue Spires' Eupatorium 'Little Red' Nepeta 'Joanna Reed' Geranium 'A.T. Johnson' Knautia macedonica Solidago 'Little Lemon' Salvia 'Black and Blue' Geranium 'Blue Sunrise' Scabiosa ochroleuca Angelica gigas I have included plants in the above list whether they are in full bloom or have just a smattering of blossoms. We finally have pleasant temperatures and rain in my neck of the woods, and I think I can hear my garden sighing in relief. Here is a list of plants I have that still have not bloomed and/or are currently forming buds: Various sedums Helianthus 'Lemon Queen' Solidago 'Fireworks' Various asters Various Korean mums Aconitum 'Barker's Variety' Anemone 'Honorine Jobert' Artemisia lactiflora 'Guizhou' Various colchicums Various autumn crocus Helianthus 'First Light' Salvia azurea 'Nekan' Allium 'Sugar Melt' Allium tuberosum Allium thunbergii 'Ozawa' Allium thunbergii 'White Form' Scilla autumnalis Lycoris squamigera For the past couple of weeks, I have been putting in as many late blooming hardy chrysanthemums and asters as I can find and afford. Without a doubt, gardening will become more challenging in coming years due to climate change. Included below is a photo of the stunning Lycoris chinensis:...See MoreJuly 2018, Week 4, Fun, Fun, Fun
Comments (0)Since we just went through such a hard week for ourselves and our gardens, we all need a break. This week's gardening theme song reflects that and is just for fun....just a happy song to make us smile. Fun, Fun, Fun by The Beach Boys Last week definitely was not fun for our gardens or ourselves, but we get a little bit of a break for a few days before temperatures warm up again. I hope everybody and their gardens made it through the very tough weather week in good condition. Our garden is struggling with the lack of rainfall and very high summer heat. Yesterday really was stunningly hot so early in the day that it was mind-blowing. We were 103 degrees with a heat index of 105 before noon even arrived. Really? What did we do to deserve that? lol. We peaked at a high of 111 and a heat index of 113, and I would love to believe that yesterday will be our worst day of the summer and that there won't be any more like that one. After a week of weather like that, parts of our yard and garden look as if somebody took a blow torch to them. I'm watering really heavily and really often, for me, in an effort to keep the flowers in the garden going for the pollinators because they need them. There's not many native flowers left in bloom for them as most of them are dried up and either going dormant or dying. At least the native sunflowers are hanging in there, so the pollinators have those. There's a couple of patches of frogfruit in bloom in areas where I have made puddles of water for the small wildlife. At this time of the year, every single wildflower counts. The vegetable plants are not amused by the mid-summer heat. I have shade cloth over peppers and a few of the tomatoes and that is helping, but everything else including the fall tomatoes is sitting there roasting in the sun. Even the okra leaves wilted badly yesterday and their soil was plenty moist. The harvesting continues, albeit at a slower pace---okra, lima beans, peppers (hot and sweet), and tomatoes. The first planting of southern peas has finished up and the second planting isn't producing yet but the Lima beans are filling the gap nicely, although they are late. At least they're finally producing, which seems like a miracle of sorts in this heat. Because butterflies love the heat, the garden is overflowing with them now. They are simply everywhere which is great. So are the grasshoppers, which is not so great. It is, however, typical of what happens when the weather gets hot and the fields dry up and the grasshoppers migrate in huge numbers to irrigated areas. I hope everyone is seeing lots of hummingbirds. I think we have had more hummingbirds in the yard and garden this week than ever before. I suppose this is happening for various reasons---the heat and drought conditions may be driving them in out of the native woodlands and grasslands to homes with irrigated yards and gardens. It could be the abundant blooms in the garden for them---I selected so many flowers specifically in mind for them this year. It seems like they are visiting the feeders a lot more---just like they do as they migrate, though it is so early that I am not sure that they've begun migrating yet. Still, their southward migration will begin soon. I also set up a lawn sprinkler in the lawn in the midst of a bunch of trees and run it for them for a few minutes every hour, and they really seem to enjoy flying through the mist of the sprinkler. I'm not sure if they are bathing or playing, but they seem happy no matter what it is that they are doing. Maybe they just need some heat relief too. The garden itself is full of birds searching for insects to eat. I hope they are devouring grasshoppers. Are y'all planning fall gardens? Has anyone got anything going yet other than fall tomatoes? Due to the prolonged lack of rainfall here, I don't have much of a garden plan for fall yet. I'm waiting to see what happens between now and mid-August. If some rain doesn't fall, I don't think I'll plant anything in August. It is just too dry. I feel like it is going to be challenging enough just to keep the current garden plants alive, including the fall tomatoes, from now through mid-August. Historically, our worst summer heat in my county occurs in the first half of August, although I'd be perfectly happy if this year is an exception to the rule. The grass? Our bermuda grass looks pitiful and I don't really care, except that withered, dry grass becomes a fire hazard, so I guess I'll try harder to get it some water this week. It is so dry that its' green color is about gone, and it doesn't spring back after you walk on it....so footprints from the day before are still visible in the grass each morning. Fire activity is picking up down here, not just in our county but in other counties on both sides of the river, and burn bans are starting to pop up---in some cases on the Texas side in the form of emergency burn bans implemented without notice because the weather situation suddenly seems so dire. It really isn't too bad in our county yet, but I feel like it has the potential to turn bad quickly. So, what's new with everybody? How did your plants handle the extreme heat? Are you excited for fall gardening? Just hoping to survive the summer? Beyond caring? Remember to stay hydrated if you're still having the heat. Our cool-down has begun but we aren't really cool yet---the nighttime was cooler. It was nice to wake up to temperatures in the 70s instead of the 80s, but our high still is expected to be 106 today with whatever heat index comes with it. I'm looking forward to Tuesday when we are not expected to hit the triple digits....but they'll be back by Thursday, so the weather reprieve is brief here. The chickens were allowed to leave the mud room and free range around the yard late yesterday evening and spent the night in their coops. The mudroom has been cleaned up, swept and mopped but I haven't moved the furniture back into it. I'll do that today or tomorrow. Covering the entire thing in 4 mm plastic taped down to the floor so they couldn't get under it worked out really well and made clean up a breeze. Have a great day everyone and a wonderful week as well. Dawn...See MoreJuly 2018, Week 4, Fun, Fun, Fun (Third Attempt---First 2 Disappeared)
Comments (73)Jen, I bet is has been a crazy week with extra furbabies underfoot. I hope it was a fun one. Nancy, Thanks for the photo of the rain. I've just about forgotten what rain looks like. We're hoping to get some on Sunday or Monday although the amount the 7-day QPF is forecasting for us keeps dropping, choking out hope of getting good rain with each update. Last night's/this morning's rain went both north and south of us (naturally) but we got a few drops.....8' rain....one raindrop every 8 feet. This so-called rain fell for a couple of hours (in theory, because we did have wind, thunder and lightning for the entire time) but the ground still looked dry when it was done, and the rain gauge had less than 1/100th of an inch in it...so we called it a "trace" of rain. It is probable rain fell from the clouds higher above but evaporated as it came through the drier air layer down near the ground because it looked like it was raining, but we literally were not feeling it or seeing it at the ground level. Virga. That's the story of our lives lately. That is so terrible about the ping pong ball sized hail. Hail that size can do a lot of damage. The worst hail I've been in personally myself was baseball to softball sized, and experiencing that once in a lifetime was one time too many. Larry, I'm sorry for all your troubles with the incompetent medical folks who have wasted three months of your time. I know that sort of thing is very frustrating. Jennifer, I am doing my best to hang in there, thinking that if only rain...real rain, not evaporating rain, not rain that falls 3 miles north or 1/2 mile south, but actual real rain that falls on our land and wets everything down....if only.....if only it will fall in the next few days, than maybe I can keep watering and keep the blooms going for the birds, bees, butterflies, etc. We're still hitting 100 every day (105 Thursday at our house, 103 yesterday, 101 today) and not getting the rain, so the garden just roasts and roasts in this heat and dryness. We were out at a fire again yesterday...a really bad one....a 6,000 s.f. barn with animals temporarily trapped by the flames. That big metal barn was like an oven and the firefighters suffered tremendously while fighting that fire. They are tough and never quit, but a person can only take so much heat. For the second day in a row, they already had a firefighter in the ambulance by the time we arrived on the scene with water, Gatorade and more....and we were not that slow to arrive either. The heat is just that bad. I had cooked fire food (still had some in the oven when the pagers went off) all morning long, and spent the whole afternoon at the fire, so never stepped foot in my garden yesterday. I finally went in there around 7:30 or 8:00 pm tonight just to water tomatoes in containers. That is all I could manage to do today. I couldn't go to today's fire (because, of course, there was one....but Tim went) because we have the 3 year old granddaughter this weekend. Instead of playing in the dirt, I've been playing with Play Dough and Softee Dough. I know you all are jealous. Megan, If every weather guy in the state stood on their head and swore that August would be more mild....I still wouldn't believe it. Not for us. Being this far south, we rarely get the cool-downs that hit points further north, so I don't expect much relief. We usually go anywhere from 2 to 5 degrees higher than forecast anyway, so even if they forecast cooler weather, we do not necessarily see it happen. Tomorrow is supposed to be our last 100+ degree day for a week or so, and I hope they are right. Even the low 90s would feel good compared to what we've been having. They just don't seem to do a very good job forecast our high temperatures down here. We also get a lot of compressional heating as fronts pass or are approaching or whatever, and inevitably the compressional heating pushes us to higher temperatures than what was forecast. I didn't even known what compressional heating was when we moved here, but I sure do know what it is now. Y'all know how much trouble I have with venomous snakes slithering out of the woods and into the garden to eat frogs and toads and whatever.....well, yesterday, at the fire, towards the end when the firefighters were doing overhaul, they brought out a charred crispy snake, burned and blackened so badly that you couldn't tell what sort of snake it had been, but it had the pointed head......so, I felt right at home with...the snake of the day. See there, I don't even have to step foot into the garden to see snakes. We ate lunch early today at Caddo Street BBQ in Ardmore, which is a really new place. I think it opened for business on July 4th. It was amazing---the food all tasted home-made, and I do mean home-made, not like the restaurant version of home-made but like true grandma-cooked-it-in-the-kitchen home-made. They're only open from 10:30 a.m. until approximately 2:30 p.m. (closing earlier if the meat sells out early, but staying open later if they still have meat available) and we were there early to guarantee we would get fed before the place turned into a standing-room-only situation. So, if you're in line ordering your food at 10:30 a.m., I guess it is brunch more than breakfast or lunch. I would gladly eat our first meal of the day there each Saturday for the rest of our lives. It all was so good, and Saturday seems to be the one day that Tim, Chris, Jana and I all can get together. We met the owner who seems like a fine person (and he sure knows how to smoke meat) and Chris won a free t-shirt for being the first customer in line this morning (which surprised and thrilled him---he will wear that shirt with pride). So, my weekend hasn't been about gardening at all, really, and I don't care. I need a break. Whether I want a break or not is a moot point---the daily fires (which I knew were coming at some point due to the drought) will ensure I pretty much stay out of the garden for a while, I guess. I do hope I can get back into some sort of gardening schedule on Monday and at least manage to harvest daily. I think that all that is really waiting to be harvested now is a few watermelons and some okra. Thankfully, I'm growing Stewart's Zeebest---and you can let it can really long and it doesn't get woody right away like some other okra varieties do. I'll try to start the weekly thread on time in the morning because the three year old usually sleeps in late and that should give me some computer time. I hope you all get whatever wonderful weather is in your forecast....rain, cooler temperatures....all of the above. Dawn...See MoreSeptember 2018, Week 4
Comments (55)We have a huge mosquito invasion here. Hordes of them hang around just outside all our exterior doors just waiting for us to walk out the door, and every time a person, dog or cat goes in or out, the mosquitoes try to fly inside. Hunting them down indoors and killing them if they make it indoors is very tedious. It is the same thing when you get into the car---the mosquitoes fly in with you. Many counties near us, mostly on the TX side of the river, are reporting positive findings of West Nile in mosquitoes caught in traps. Fort Worth has had 200 mosquitoes test positive for West Nile in recent days. Some cities have begun spray programs. Y'all be careful around all these mosquitoes. I assume that with this many mosquitoes active and testing positive for West Nile, we likely will start hearing about human cases of West Nile soon. Tim and I suddenly have wasps---three new, big wasp nests have appeared on the house this week. He sprayed those with a wasp spray just around sunset yesterday and will spray again this evening if any wasps still are on/in the nests. I imagine the cooler weather explains the sudden appearance of the wasps and the building of nests on the house. We had wasps around all summer and just ignored them because they are very beneficial insects to have as many prey on caterpillars, but they weren't around the house much in the hot summer months, and they weren't building nests attached to the house. We won't even mention the huge fire ant mounds popping up everywhere, other than to say they are here. There's tons of grasshoppers still, and we also still have stink bugs and this week I am seeing a few squash bugs. Y'all know that squash bugs will feed on Halloween pumpkins and decorative pumpkins you have sitting outside for autumn decorations right? I watch for them and try to kill them when I see them there. Any that escape death will overwinter and be the start of next year's squash bug problem. Back in the summer months I got tired of weeding the asparagus bed, so cut back the asparagus really hard and sowed a ton of leftover flower seeds into that bed. I figured if weeds were going to grow mixed in with my asparagus plants, they might as well be the weeds of my choosing. So, in the asparagus bed we now have a lot of plants in bloom: cosmos, the grain type amaranths, Nicotiana alata, daturas, Laura Bush petunias, zinnias, rose moss and more. I'm sure there's weeds in there as well but you really cannot see them because of all the pretty flowers in bloom. The asparagus grew back of course. Nothing kills asparagus. The seeds I tossed into the asparagus bed were slow to sprout and grow because we were in drought, but the plants are doing great now. That is a good thing as many of the summer bloomers that have been growing in the garden since March or April are worn out and dying back or going to seed, but that one long asparagus bed is full of fresh fall blooms. Many of the zinnias I planted in the spring are rapidly declining now after this latest couple of inches of rain that fell this week. The soil is just too wet for them now, but at the same time, a few small zinnias that sprouted in the mulch in adjacent pathways are getting ready to bloom. I'm glad I left them in the pathways when I saw they had sprouted there. Usually I immediately yank out anything that sprouts in the mulch, but I can't yank out baby zinnias in August because I know the older ones are tired out and worn out and declining. Some of the pineapple sage plants are in the same condition of decline---they like well-drained soil, but I have a total of 9 pineapple sage plants, which means we still have plenty in bloom because only a couple have died. I believe the monarchs are migrating through here now. We had tons of them nectaring yesterday and most are flying south. Some are flying southwest, which also is fairly typical here at this time of the year. Some of the males are puddling. All in all, there's still a whole lot going on outdoors even as the season is winding down. The most amazing garden survivor is 2 or 3 flat-leaf parsley plants that somehow survived all the heat and drought (not bad for cool-season plants in a 100+-degree summer, growing in full sun), followed by purple datura volunteers that sprouted in August and are getting ready to bloom in the next few days. The fall tomato plants still don't have much fruit on them, likely because we stayed in the 90s very deeply into September so it won't be a great fall tomato year here, but the SunGold I put in the ground in March still is producing so at least there's that. So many morning glories, mostly Grandpa Ott's, sprouted and started growing along the fenceline in late summer that they are beginning to shade the pineapple sage, Russian sage and purple daturas, so I spent some time last evening yanking out a bunch of them. With sunlight/day length becoming increasingly limited as we go more deeply into autumn, I want for the flowers in the border along the driveway to not have their sunlight blocked by aggressive, weedy MGs. Today's task will be to cut back four o'clocks that are growing through the western fence and shading my peony plants and adjacent container plants. If only the four o'clocks would stay where they are supposed to grow outside the garden fence, but four o'clocks ignore boundaries. It is all fun and games out in the garden later today, at least until I encounter a snake of any kind. Then, the party will be over. Dawn...See MoreNancy RW (zone 7)
5 years agoMegan Huntley
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5 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
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5 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
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