What is this water falling from the skies?

 RAIN!!!  Glorious, wonderful, beautiful rain!

After a quick round of thunderstorms last night, the clouds decided to have mercy upon us and have been releasing a steady, slow rain since the wee hours of the morning. I took advantage and planted the asters that were dug up to make room for the arbor earlier this summer.  Despite the already half inch or more of rain, only the very crust of the ground is damp; an inch below it is still dry as a bone.  Still, this will help some.  I split the Alma Potschke (vivid pink) and soft purple asters and dotted them throughout the wildflower meadow.  The shorter lilac colored asters have taken seat in the cottage gardens.  I was able to dig up some self seeded rose campions from the hillside beds and move them into the cottage gardens, as well. Before the day is over, I'll hopefully sow a few rows of carrots where the onions were, too.  Hope springs eternal and all that.

Speaking of hope...I was hoping I'd hauled the last of the mulch this weekend, but it looks like I'll need another truck load before I call it good.   I've got 98% of the bank covered at this point; all that's left is one little spot around the backside.

 The bulk of this load went toward a path I decided to make at the top of the bank, leaving space between what's left of the miscanthus grasses and the edge of the wildflower meadow.

 Not only does it give me enough room to access the meadow from the back, but it's wide enough for the wheelbarrow.  I honestly never intended to mulch quite this much, but I'm happy that I did.  I like the look of it, and it's a little bit of order among my ever growing chaos.  

 At the bottom of the slope I've decided to continue with my cinder blocks and caps to define the edges of the bank.  I should have enough block left to do that, but the block pile is most likely harboring - you guessed it! - more hornets.  I'll have to carefully pick away at that.  

In the meantime I can continue adjusting and fussing with the rope fence.  I've decided I really like it, and by next year the stakes will have begun to turn grey, matching the big fence and the arbor.  I'm also going to do the same type of rope fence along the raspberry patch, which has not been supported and is going in all different directions.  I did get some fruit this year, but the birds and wasps have eaten most of the berries before I could harvest.  I'll know better for next year!

In hydroponic news, my mesclun is growing like crazy.

 There's almost enough for one salad.  Next time I sow seeds, I should sow some in dirt and do a comparison of which grows faster.  Or maybe just eat what I have and move on.

life in a dry, brown place

 Still no rain.  Well...a five minute spattering of water doesn't count, does it?  The ground is so dry that it may take a month of rain at this point to saturate it again, and most of New Hampshire is now in a moderate drought per the US Drought Monitor.  The cottage gardens are horrid to look at.  Other plants around the property are beginning a slow death, as well.  The little water feature is going dry, and even the bog garden is starved for moisture. Now that the weather has at least taken a turn for the cooler, I need to get out there and deadhead and cut back as much as possible, which will stop the plants from trying to grow or flower, and send more energy to the roots, where it's needed. 

I've been forced to harvest the onions, shallots, garlic, and some of the potatoes.  It's a mixed bag of NICE! and ....what the heck happened here?  (Imagine my surprise when I dumped out a bag of potatoes and found...yellowjackets.  Will the hornet invasion never end?!?!)  But there's still enough of a harvest to share and some to store for winter.  I won't be doing any fall sowing, except maybe carrots.

garlic, cherry tomatoes, Hungarian Hot Wax and Shishito peppers

And it's not just the gardens that are suffering.  Our lawns are crispy crunchy, leaves have begun to drop from trees, and even non-garden spieces of plants are showing signs of distress.  Well, except for weeds, that is.  Grrrrr!

All is not lost, though.  Our generous neighbors have given us access to their water, so we've been putting tubs and tanks on our trucks and hauling water in to save what we can.  I've been concentrating on the beans, cucumbers, what's left of the tomatoes and peppers, and the squash.  Some plants continue to flourish, so I've begun to note which still thrive despite the heat and drought.  Coreopsis, gaillardia, tall garden phlox, black eyed Susans, and yellow toadflax are glorious.  The tall prairie coneflowers are drooping, but I can't tell if that's from being top heavy in an area without support, or from thirst.

 In the hot beds, the blackberry lily that survived bloomed, and it's so beautiful!  I definitely need more of these, because like daylilies, the bloom only lasts one day, then shrivels up.

 Even in the toughest of times, there is beauty if you look for it.

hoses, hornets, and hillsides

 And you thought triple H was hazy, hot, and humid.  

It actually is those things right now; I'm cloistered in the house to avoid yet another heatwave.  What a shame, it's been glorious sleeping weather the last five or six nights!

The watering is still precarious.  I can't remember the last good rain we had.  At this point, we need three or four days of gentle, all day soakers to replenish the groundwater...maybe even more than that.  After that insanely wet spring, you'd think we would have water to spare, but not so.  I used the water in the 75 gallon stock tank that I collected from roof runoff earlier this year in one watering of the hillside and cottage gardens.  The soaking tub in the back yard was emptied into watering cans to water the tomatoes.  My onions are dying off quicker than I would expect, and some never even got past gumball size.  I dumped a bag of spuds to see how they were doing, and they were still like baby potatoes.  I had 6 baby Japanese maple trees that were coming along well this spring, but one has shriveled and died, and two don't look very happy.  Despite being a variety able to tolerate sun, they can't handle the baking conditions of my holding beds without consistent watering, so I'll need to pot them up and move them into a shadier area for the time being.  I have assorted perennials and shrubs that are in pots right now that need to be planted, but without a way to water them daily as they adjust, they'll stay where they are.   The beds that I had weeded last week are full of self seeded perennials that should be dug up and transplanted, but they're in the same boat.  As if that wasn't bad enough, most of the hoses and sprayer heads I have on hand have given up the ghost.  I went from heavy, awkward rubber hoses to the lightweight expandable cloth ones years ago, and they just don't last.  I can usually get two or three years out of them before they spring a leak.  The sprayer heads are just cheap plastic junk; I need to invest in some good ones that will last more than a season.  I gritted my teeth and laid out the money for a new lightweight, kink-free rubber hose for the back yard.  Hopefully that one will last a few years.  This morning I was watering the veg in the hillside garden and yet another cloth hose split, so I'll need to order yet another.  With all these water woes, I'm hoping we'll get cooler, wetter weather soon enough and I can be done with it.  

The squash plants are growing by leaps and bounds, though.  They love this hot weather and beating sun, and I think the fresh manure I covered the bank in retained a lot of moisture.  I had planned to spend the last two cool days before the heatwave either moving fence to give the mules new grazing ground, or continuing the mulching project on the squash bank.  After the mules had grazed for their allotted hour and a half, they went back to the barn to stand in front of their fans and piles of hay for the day and I reviewed the fence situation.  My plan is to create another dry lot where the downed pine sat for the last year; I've been keeping it mowed but haven't done the fencing yet, and I will need to get material in to smother the grass.  I thought, why don't I just make a short run from the current alley across to that area, and the boys can eat that down for now.  Maybe I can get enough money together to finish fencing the dry lot area and by the time they've eaten the short run, I can let them into the dry lot area and they can eat that down next.  My plan was to do one side of the short run with T-posts and no climb fence, and move the pipe panels to create the other side.  I started to take the pipe panels apart and immediately had a swarm of hornets buzzing around my head.  The little buggers found a hole where the panel weld had rotted out and built a nest inside the fence - and this isn't the first time that's happened!  You can see these photos, under the top bar is a hornet on the fence, and he goes up into the pipe through the hole.

UGH.  I didn't want to spray up into the fence because I don't want to use poison in my grazing area, so I walked away to stew on the issue.  The next day as Fargo was coming through the gate, he hit the bottom pipe with his hoof.  I heard it but didn't think much of it, but as I was swinging the gate closed I caught movement and looked up, and in the corner of the frame where it had been bent and was a little rusted and starting to separate, there were about five angry hornets looking down on me.  Are you serious?!?!?!  I can't even deal with this.  Again, poison isn't an option around the boys, so around twenty minutes to five this morning I was out there on a ladder trying to save my mules and myself from getting swarmed and stung.  I very quickly wrapped the area in aluminum foil twice around, crimped it, then quickly taped it up with all weather Gorilla Tape.  

I went around the area about five times with the tape, but for all I know those hornets are in there chewing their way through it.  I hate having to do thing like that, but it's the only gate and I can't risk the boys getting stung, especially if they can't really get away - the barn has no way to close them in thanks to Fargo's claustrophobia, so they'd be trapped with a swarm of angry hornets inside and out.  

I decided fencing will wait until after a few good, hard, killing frosts, which should end the hornet siege naturally.  I may try to fence the front pasture and create a chute from the dry lot to it.  I need to think on this, because part of the fence would need to be moveable during hay season, so trucks and trailers can jockey into place.  Electric fence would be the sensible solution, but I don't trust the mules not to bust right through it.  That's all I'd need...those two goons running amok up and down the neighborhood.

So with the fencing situation stalled, I turned back to the bank project.  Another two yards of bark mulch, as many cardboard boxes as could be collected, and I was off.

 

 

It's getting there!  I swear, every time I add more mulch, the squash plants double in size.  I would say I'm about 70% there, just a little more to do. 

 That plant in the foreground is a bull thistle, and the bane of my existence.  I spend a day every spring carefully picking through the pasture and surrounding edges looking for them as they just begin growing, and painstakingly pulling them up by the roots.  I put them in my big garden bags and take them to the local dump, where they end up on the mulch pile.  With their razor sharp thorns, they are incredibly painful if you get tangled in them or brush up against them.  As much as I love the beautiful flowers and I know the goldfinch love the seeds, I cant afford to have them near the mules (or me!).  Obviously, I miss a few here and there. The things you do to keep your babies safe...

 

The August Slump

 My life is like hearing the song Sunshine Lollipops and Rainbows as it slowly grinds down to a halt and the world goes dark.  Well, that might be an exaggeration...but it sure feels bleak.  It's the time of the year when heat sets in, water runs low, my energy wanes, and a tiny bit of depression settles in.

The heat has spurred the weeds to grow at an accelerated rate and keeping up with them is exhausting.  How is it the weeds grow so well, yet my beautiful plants begin a slow, painful death?  My mission this winter is to pour through plant books and websites to find plants that thrive in dry conditions and bloom during the July through September heat.  Sounds like I need more echinacea.  Twist my arm.

But not all is doom and gloom; late July into early August is when the daylilies shine in all their glory.

 

 

 

 

Breathtaking.  I need to start begging my mother for some of her specimens, since she has easily ten times more varieties than I do.

Meanwhile, I've decided my energies need to be focused on the hillside garden.  I spent portions of two days on the right side, deadheading and pulling errant weeds and grasses.  I've managed to wrangle it into some semblance of order, and took away two and a half 72 gallon garden bags full of debris.

 For my next trick, I'll work on the other side.

 What a mess.  

 Speaking of messes, I've been picking away at the bank in the backyard.  Although I love the Green Mountain mulch that I was buying by the bag, it soon proved to be a costly venture.  I ended up going to our local landscape supplier and was able to get a truckload of mulch at a much better price.  

 It's coming along nicely, and the squash plants have really taken off.  I've had to cut the surrounding grass a few times; if only it grew where I wanted it as lush and thick!

July 18th

 

August 4th

July 18th

August 4th

A few more truckloads should finish this project, and once the squash are all tucked safely into their mulch beds, I should be able to spread the rest with Li'l Red and save my back.  Won't that be nice?  

Although it's still bloody hot out there, the nighttime temperatures are - when it's not a heatwave - dipping into the mid fifties.  There is a distinct feel of autumn in those nights, and it's a signal to sow cool temperature crops for a fall harvest.  Once I've tackled the left hand mess of the hillside garden, I'll try again for peas, radish, and salad crops, all of which did horribly this spring.  I'll do a second sowing of carrots and beans, as well.  I regret not growing corn again this year; I have so much to learn about that particular crop.  And hopefully if the bank area is completed, next year I can grow a wider variety of squashes and pumpkins.  I guess gardening, whether vegetables or ornamental plants, is an exercise in always looking forward.