Hallelujah! The Rains Have Come!

The rains have come at last. The temperatures have fallen to manageable levels. In fact, the high temperature was only 74F (23.3C) on Thursday! Incredible. Our neighborhood actually missed out on some of the rain that fell in the region - particularly to the South in Alabama - but I still think we must have ended up getting close to 2 inches of rain this past week.

The rain and cooler temperatures have had a miraculously restorative effect on the garden just when I was close to giving up hope.

Remember the twisted pineapple sage and the withered zinnia that were already looking drought-ravaged back in late June before the record heat wave?

Here's how they have bounced back with the cooler, wetter weather:

Pineapple sage, back from the dead

Zinnia, twisted no more

The rest of the garden is looking good too. Here are some of the plants that caught my eye in the front Eastern bed:

Ajuga may have been hanging tough in the heat, but it seems to be loving this wetter weather. It is even threatening to overgrow its plant tag!

The heat and the drought scorched the older leaves on this Aronia arbutifolia (red chokeberry) seedling, but the new leaves look green and healthy.

I was worried about clematis integrifolia (a bush-type clematis) after the older stems flopped over and the leaves curled up. But as you can see, fresh new foliage has emerged from the center of the clump. A hopeful sign!

Over in the vegetable garden...

I still haven't gotten any beans off these Emerite pole beans yet, but the new leaves look gorgeous and untouched (so far) by any of the pests that chewed holes in the older leaves. I haven't sprayed at all. Maybe the predator insects have the upper hand now?

I should be harvesting okra by now, not staring down at tiny seedlings, but at least a couple of these Emerald okra seedlings are looking healthy and starting to put on a little bit of growth.

This hardy hibiscus plant is squeezed into the vegetable garden alongside cucumbers and tomatoes. I think it's going to bloom in the next day or two. The beautiful blossoms only last one day. I'll try to take a photo for you when it happens.

And two final shots from the back (Western) beds:

Cosmos had been looking tired in the heat. Some of the plants had actually turned brown and died, others were just resting and biding their time. Now that the rains have come, this one is back in bloom.

This is the gaura I didn't trim. I'm glad that I procrastinated so that I could get this photo of the stems laden with water droplets just moments after a strong rain shower.

I am so happy to have rain. I hope that all the other gardeners and farmers struggling with drought this year will soon receive the blessing of sweet, cool rain dousing their troubles and washing away their worries.

Triple Digit Heat Continues, but Blue Plumbago Blooms Anyway

Blue Plumbago defies the heat and starts to bloom!!

That 95% rain chance yesterday?

Good thing I didn't bet on it, because in reality the 5% likelihood of not-a-single-drop-of-rain came to pass.

So I trudged out this morning to see what had shriveled up and died overnight. And that's when I saw it.

Direct afternoon sun. Clay soil. Surrounded by wilting zinnias, fading coneflowers and limp-leaved crape myrtles --- the hardy blue plumbago (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides) had puffed out its metaphorical chest and said, "You feeling a little hot? How about I cool things down with these true-blue flower petals, y'all?"

I love it. I love that with just a bit of supplemental water and a lot of affection, hardy blue plumbago is standing strong and unfurling flower petals in the triple-digits.

And since the last post was a little doom-and-gloomy, how about a few other pics on some other plants that are toughing out the drought (so far):

Riesentraube cherry tomatoes are ripening up nicely

Spanish Musica pole beans are hanging in there, although the leaves are crinkling and beans themselves are curly. We had our first bean harvest last night, sauteed in olive oil. Could this curling be due to the heat?

Here's a little bee on a big purple coneflower...

And here's a smaller flower with a bigger bee...and a skipper butterfly. I didn't even notice the skipper until after I took this photo. He might have skipped into the picture while I was pushing the shutter button.

Who won this staring contest? The skipper! The bee flew off to a different cone flower.

Shots in the Garden! (June 3-9, 2012)

Bee on Russian Sage

I think I remember now that the coneflowers I planted last year are Echinacea purpurea (Purple Coneflower). It takes a long time for the flower to open, but once it does, the flower lasts for a long time and slowly evolves through different stages. 

This is an Echinacea purpurea flower that has been open for a long time. I haven't counted the days, but perhaps as long as two weeks? The individual flower petals are fading, but the central part of the flower and what I presume are its spiky seeds are getting bolder, more dramatic and more sculptural each day.

Four stages of flowering on a single Purple Coneflower plant. 

Let's move over to the vegetable and herb garden. Chocolate mint is growing in its own pot. Yes, the leaves really do taste and smell like a combination of mint and chocolate! Mint has a reputation for being invasive and as you can see, this plant has put out rhizomes in attempt to colonize new ground. Being in a pot, the rhizomes have been forced to take a circular path.

The Sun Gold cherry tomato plant has lots of fruit, but none of them are ripe enough to pick yet.

Spanish Musica pole beans are boldly climbing their trellis made from an upside-down tomato cage staked into the ground. 

I like the name of this cucumber variety from Kitazawa Seeds: "Progress". The seedlings have emerged next to a makeshift 'trellis' I created from a roll of hardware cloth. I'm hoping the plants can be trained onto the trellis to keep the fruit off the ground and help keep the plants healthy. Last year, my cucumbers produced heavily but succumbed to powdery mildew. Progress and the other cucumber variety I planted ("Southern Delight", also from Kitazawa) are both supposed to be disease-resistant varieties. 

The Natchez crape myrtles have started to flower!

The peeling bark on the Natchez crape myrtle adds another layer of visual interest. 

I like to post photos of my gardening triumphs, but I think that sharing information on my failures can be equally instructive. This is/was Lamium maculatum, also known as Spotted Deadnettle. This particular variety is/was "Red Nancy". Lamium is supposed to form a nice groundcover in partial shade settings. Some sites even warn that the plant can become rampant or invasive. I would say this is the opposite of invasive, at least in our Middle Tennessee garden.

Back to a more cheerful photo. This sweet alyssum is thriving in the same bed where the lamium flopped. We sowed some sweet alyssum seed this year, but also purchased purple, pink and white seedlings at a local nursery. Our success rate was not great with the seedlings, but the white ones seem to have done best of all. Based on my experiences last year, I hope that alyssum will flower all summer, attracting small beneficial insects like hoverflies and parasitic wasps to the garden. I may need to give the plant a haircut in the middle of the summer, but then it should bounce back and flower strongly in the fall until frost. We'll see if these expectations are fulfilled!

The David Garden Phlox is almost ready to bloom!

Half a zinnia is better than none! Why only half? I suspect the gold finches. I'm not sure if they eat the petals or probably just dislodge them while going after the seeds. Either way, they leave intact the yellow 'crown' that surrounds the pink globe on these improbably beautiful flowers.

We started with blue and let's finish with blue. This is one of the Rozanne perennial geraniums, still covered in flowers.

Shots in the Garden! (May 20-26, 2012)

Daylily (Hemerocallis), not sure of the variety because we inherited these dayliles when we moved in.

Busy bee at work gathering pollen from Cosmos flower

I believe this is a type of coneflower (Echinacea). I don't remember ordering it, but I think it might have grown from a bonus pack of seeds we sowed last year.

Russian Sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) and bee.

I like the way that Zinnia buds look just before they open.

The front border is filled with bright and cheerful English Marigolds (Calendula officinalis, a.k.a. Pot Marigolds)

Pole bean seedlings (Phaseolus vulgaris, Spanish Musica variety) getting off to a strong and inspiring start.