I have various markers for the changing of the seasons. Some of them are about me – the first day in summer I wear sandals; the first day of autumn I wear a winter coat – and some are about the world around me: the first day for corn or last day for strawberries at the market, the first ninety degree day, the first snowfall. A big one for rainfall is what needs watering. We’ve had so little rain in July that even the weeds have started to wilt here in the city. The plantains edging the asphalt strip next to the house look like they’re dying.
The front garden is decimated on this especially hot day that alternates between furious hot gusts of wind and completely still air with the sun beating relentlessly down. When I got home this afternoon, almost every plant had started to wilt. The pineapple sage, which usually looks healthy no matter what the weather, was bent over, limply half-lying on the ground. One of the euphorbias had started to wilt! I didn’t even know euphorbias could wilt. So I did what a good water conservationist would never, ever do: I watered in the middle of the day. I always imagine that every conscientious gardener knows you’re supposed to water in the early morning or the late afternoon (which I’ve always taken to mean “Two or three hours before sunset,” since the time till sunset changes so much over the growing season in more northern latitudes such as mine). I worried that if I waited that long, some of the plants would actually die instead of just looking like they were contemplating it. The one smart thing that I did was that when the hot gusts came up, I would stop watering till they ceased. (Watering in a strong wind is another no-no, unless you have soaker hoses. I would LOVE to have soaker hoses, but having such easily damaged things sitting there in a shared yard seems a recipe for disaster, so I am biding my time.) Now comes the reckoning, when I go back out and see if anything has started to recover after the watering, or if the garden looks as pathetic as it did earlier.
…
I’m back and pleasantly surprised; the front garden seems to have recovered about as much as it can. It looks like some of the pansies and violas have died, but I’m not really surprised about that. Last year some of the ones planted in the northwest corner of the front garden survived all year, but that was it. So I was more surprised that they’ve survived this long.
More later.
