It was so hot here yesterday that pots I had just watered on Thursday, and that seemed fine yesterday morning, were parched and nearly dead when I went out this morning. It was our first day in the 90s with bright sun. I made my best efforts first at the botanical garden where I volunteer, and then at home.
Apparently, it wasn’t enough for some of the new plants still waiting in their nursery pots. I found a perfectly lovely (yesterday) white Gaura dry and limp this morning. I’ve cut back all its beautiful stems of flowers, watered it well, and set it in the shade in hopes it will recover.
Gaura is pretty tough. It root easily from stem cuttings and blooms here until nearly frost. I bought this white one two weeks ago and have been tardy in planting it. If it recovers, and I expect that it will, I’ll get it into the ground right away and hope it still will grow into its potential.
Mid-summer heat hit us quickly this year. The cool and damp of April and early May lulled me into procrastination on many fronts. But the slow transition from spring to summer in our garden has now gotten stuck on ‘fast-forward.’ There’s not much one can do once the weather turns hot except play along as best one can.
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Hi WG,
just got back to DC from visiting daughter/grandkids in NYC, where I planted the pots on my daughter’s terrace; need to focus on my own patio pots this week…thought I was being lazy, but am now glad I didn’t get to them before the 90+ degree heat smacked us. Praying that the rain promised for later today materializes, as I added more PA sedge to the slope I’ve been working on for 2 years & cdn’t force myself outside this wkend to water them.
Meanwhile, two neighboring trees fell on my property in Feb, so I decided to take-down a big, deteriorating tree on my own property 2 days ago (concentrating the damage before random catastrophe strikes), so I’m now faced with planting the affected area with (somewhat?) more sun than it previously had. No idea what I’m doing (but what else is new?).
Sorry to babble-on incoherently, but your posts always spur me forward…just when I’m ready to give up, sell the house/garden & flee (to where, I don’t know), your posts remind me that even expert gardeners (like you) flag occasionally, and still get good results. Thx!
Your fan, Monica