Before It All Dries Up and Blows Away ...

The annual wailing and gnashing of teeth has commenced here on my corner of Katy. There's been no appreciable rain for way too long and even the drought tolerant plants are drooping in the summer heat, as am I. This would be understandable were it July but to have already reached this point before the end of May is a very scary thing indeed. Although we were under a severe thunderstorm warning early this evening, the rain stayed north of us and I suspect I'll spend some quality time with my hoses tomorrow.

Happily, there are still some blooms to be found throughout the garden. Here's a few shots from earlier this evening ... first up, the Rudbeckia (Cherokee, maybe) that reseeded itself and is flourishing in the rose bed, the length of the yard from where it was originally planted.
While most of the daylilies in the dedicated daylily bed are looking like pale imitations of themselves due to the heat, those in the sidewalk bed out front (which receives dappled sun) are much happier. Lost tags are more of the rule than the exception here on MCOK, but I think this one is Enon:This beauty, however, remains unidentified. This is one of the few that's held its color in the daylily bed :
I wish this last shot had been taken in my garden but no such luck. A friend and her family were in town this past weekend and we met out at Mercer Arboretum to see what delights it had to offer. It's just far enough north that Japanese maples need not struggle to survive.


Comments

Gail said…
Sorry to hear you are having a droughty spell. I worry that the SE will have a repeat of last years horrible drought and lose even more trees and shrubs, plants are much easier to replace.

Your daylilies are lovely and the Rudbeckia is a handsome plant.

Good luck with the water hose wrangling...it builds good muscles!

Gail
Anonymous said…
It's been hot as Hades here too. But this seems fairly typical for late May, don't you think? Only 5 more months to go until it cools off again! ;-)
Cindy, MCOK said…
Gail, I know from friends in Tennessee & North Carolina that last year's lack of rain was really hard on y'all. I hope none of us experience another year like that! Today it's overcast and humid ... that oppressive kind of weather that makes me tired even as I climb out of bed. I watered one or two spots earlier but I can't get motivated to get back out there.

Pam, I think it's a little warmer this year. I see from MSS' blog history that y'all were in the high 80s this time last year. Maybe it's just my age showing: each year seems tougher than the one before!
Anonymous said…
Last year was remarkably cool and wet---the best summer ever here in Austin, as far as a gardener was concerned. However, I think the weatherman said we are running nearly 10 degrees above normal this spring, and we're several inches behind in rainfall. Not good.
Anonymous said…
One of the nicest things about having other bloggers in the area is commiserating about Texas summers. Until a couple of years ago, most of the bloggers I knew were northerners. I felt I never succeeded in communicating that summer is a big brown blank as far as my garden was concerned. They just looked at our frost dates and thought we Texans had idyllic endless summer. Well it seems endless but it's not a good thing.

@ pam/digging. This is not typical weather for late May...not even in Austin. This is typical weather for late August.
Gail said…
Hello Cindy,

Just wanted to see if you were surviving the heat?

gail
Gail said…
Hello Cindy,

Just wanted to see if you were surviving the heat?

gail