BETWEEN SPRINKLER REPOSITIONINGS, I’M TAKING MY OWN ADVICE. I’m quieting my nerves by re-reading my 20-year-old essay written at just this time of year, when the garden always confounds me and seemingly just won’t cooperate. Are you having a throw-in-the-trowel moment over at your place, too?
Read the vintage essay, or just share your own pain right here in comments. You know how gardens are: They take us to the brink and then win our hearts back by magically rebounding, just as we’re about to mow them down or turn them under. Cheeky devils, aren’t they? Why didn’t I take up macrame or Bingo instead?
Off to move the vintage-kitchen-stool-turned-sprinkler-tower to another spot now…
I pitched two nursery specimens of catnip into the compost pile this past week… pots and all… after worrying about where to place them that would contain them and still not entice the cat to ruin an entire bed, I finally realized that said cat had ignored them for two months now as they waited for a home upon my deck… I expect those catnips will surprise me in the lasagna garden…
I also have banned centered mirrored symmetrical plantings… ugh… whatever was I thinking… clusters… I am now mandating random clusters… yes…!!
I too considered throwing in the towel… but I don’t have a swing or a hammock so I just have to keep going…
I’m absolutely fed up with my yard, my garden beds, myself, and my life right now. I bought a bunch of plants at a “public sale day” held by a wholesale native plant nursery back in June? May? — a while back, at any rate. Some of them are still sitting in the pots looking dejected and forlorn. I had high hopes of getting them all in the ground right away — even if they weren’t in a final spot — just so they wouldn’t waste away getting dry, root-bound, and pathetic in their pots. And I did get a few planted – ones that could go into beds that were already prepared.
But then school let out, my sister came for a visit, and I did a series of obligatory trips to see relatives, blah blah blah. I got home yesterday, and those poor plants are still out there, sitting in semi-shade, barely hanging on. And now I’m in a panic – trying to figure out a way to get them in the ground somewhere, just so their roots are protected and moist, and they can ride out the heat of summer in the ground until I can find (or create) a real home for them.
Thanks for letting me whine.
I was too ambitious back in the benignly temperate days of April and May. I planted hostas galore, Rodgersia, Ligularia and a plethora of ferns. and then the rain stopped (here in southern Westchester county, NY). Now the heat has arrived and I’m missing the record rains of ’09. I can’t keep up with the watering, everything is wilting (especially the viburnums and bottlebrush buckeyes). Who will live and who will die? i’m not ready for these weighty questions….
What a refreshing post. Sick of 2 or 3 sick roses, dry stony soil, excess shade and the sheer lack of design in my only sunny border. The garden has no overall glory but just enough bloomings to lift my flagging hopes.
thank you
Laura
Please excuse my kvetching BUT, everything is wilting in a scorching heat wave, the lawn is a yellowy brown, the new Calycanthus and Lindera Benzoin are looking very very sad and I have 6 pots from the Brushwood Nursery vine sale that have been saying loudly and clearly “PLANT ME”. How can something that gave me so much pleasure only two weeks ago be making me so crazy and guilty? Thanks to all of you for making me feel I’m not the only one.
My plan for tonight is to stay up for hours moving the sprinkler around during the hours when our well can replenish….hope for some thunder storms later in the week!
Here in Lawrence, Kansas (z5), keeping ahead of the weeds–or good plants in the wrong places, if you prefer–is the main challenge. There’s no shortage of rainfall–more than usual for this time of year.
Some bloom times have really jumped ahead, with Nicotiana sylvestris, hollyhocks and the Golden Rain trees already gone to seed, and hydrangeas on the downhill run. Daylilies (primarily H. fulva, orange ditch lilies) and hosta are peaking. It’s been a sweatbox here for the past two months. Maybe the increased humidity is pushing bloom times ahead. Still, everything is bright green and I’ve never seen so many fireflies in the evenings.
Misery loves company! :)
Welcome, PatioPatch. The soil looks like dust in some spots, and my soil is really good. Yikes. Too dry! I’m glad there are a few blooms at your place to keep you from total despair–here, too.
Welcome, Kali. Kvetch away! This is a tough moment, every single year. I kept thinking all day the well or the pump would konk out, since I have had two hoses going from 8 till just now, but so far so good. And I will have to do that day in and out all week to get some water on each of the beds here. Ugh.
Welcome, Tom. Funny you mention fireflies…I saw a few a week or two ago but hmmmm…not since. Tonight I will be on the lookout. Interesting that you have lots of rain but also heat…and so prolonged! No such thing as “normal” with weather, is there?
Hope to see you all soon again.
Well, after years of wanting a hydrangea paniculata, I planted two earlier this season. All was well until 6-1/2 inches of rain fell in two weeks, flooding the area where they were planted. Now they look dead. But I’m leaving them until the end of the summer, just in case broiling in the current 92 degree heat brings them back!
What exquisite timing! Just read the “Throw in the Trowel” column, and comments, and these latest comments. Perfect reading after hysterically planting about half of the plants I greedily bought at two-for-the-price- of-one sales this weekend. The unplanted ones sit reproachfully in the shade, and the forecast tomorrow is for 100+ degrees. What was I thinking?
And now for some high octane bitching: everyone in my neighborhood has automatic sprinkler systems, in order to protect their investments in their insta-gardens, while I lug my forever tangled and kinky hoses around my labor of love, emphasis on the word labor. What’s wrong with this picture?
And how awful will the gardens look in August, given the warp-speed blooming we’re getting this year?
All right then, finished. Calmer. Thank you Margaret and all fellow gardeners. We are a deranged crew, but we mean well and are relatively harmless.
Great timing on the topic and one that other gardeners understand well. Yeah, I wonder sometimes why I took up gardening when other things would be so much easier. Right now my throw in the trowel area is a space that I’ve neglected all season and it’s filled with self sown annual poppies that are too thick to be healthy and of course the obligatory lambs quarters. I’ve been focused on other areas and just “forgot” to be attentive and now it’s July… I was intending to mulch this entire bed and put in impatiens, actea and other semi shade things. Oh bother. I’m also doing lots of watering now that the weather is in the 90′s and we are dry in the NY capitol district.
Lots of lightning bugs in my area. Fireflies is so much more poetic a word, but I grew up calling them lightning bugs and can’t seem to change :)
I’ve snapped the blinds closed to keep out the sun, which also keeps me from having to look out the windows. Yuck! Brown lawns, drooping plants – can anything look sadder than a hydrangea trying to cope with heat?
What I really want to know, though, is where the climate change deniers went? You know . . . the ones who claimed that last winter’s record snowfalls “proved” there was no such thing as global warming.
It’s not smart to mock Mother Nature.
I didn’t throw in the trowel, I just put it down for a spell. A very hot, and dry spell as you know. I’ve thrown dozens of plants into the garden this season so at this point I’m just trying to baby them into adolescence. A cool lime hydrangae, 4 new clematis [taking your tip to spill them onto the bloomed tree peonies and rhodis], a bunch of hostas, hellebores, etc. 7 new fruit trees too! And my grafts, my apple grafts, they took. I cannot believe it. Out of the 15, I have 5 that took. 2 from the oldest tree on the property, probably over 100 years old as far as we can tell.
Veggies look great! Tomatoes [thanks to your burying tip] are looking awesome. They’re so thick and lush. And a few dozen potatoes going on. Trying some straw to see if that works for me. Bunnies were at some of the veggies, so in the heat I slowly put rabbit fencing around the garden [and then jumped in the pond to cool off]. We shall see!
Oh and the berries! They’re off the charts this year. Trying to save some for myself!
Hope you’re doing well Margaret. Come visit! I’ll make you some vegan delights and such.
: )
Thanks. I needed that. The other day, trying to get ready for the fourth with flats still languishing, I threw up my hands, put the hand shovel in the nearest empty pot, and walked off. Several of my guests looked strangely at the “plant”. Maybe now that I’ve simmered down I should go out and plant something.
I was thinking about Awaytogarden this weekend as I moved sprinklers from one dry spot to another. When I saw the picture of your sprinkler I couldn’t help thinking how we all share so many of the same joys and frustrations in our gardens. Record breaking heat and no rain in sight but I’d suck at knitting.
I’m glad to see I am not alone tackling the weeds, trying to get things into the garden bought earlier in the season. Most of all, it is good to hear others say they find their design skills still not up to par. Maybe we read too many garden magazines and books for our own good (no offense Margaret as I found yours so good I purchased a copy). Or perhaps it is that I have filled too many spots with late winter/early spring bloomers….
it being my first spring as a newbie gardener, i was very ambitious and planted a million new things…then we had the hottest june on record, and the 2nd driest june. just a little discouraging!! the doublefile virburnum begs for water every day, the cavatine pieris shrubs have dropped all their leaves, the back side of my catawba rhododendron went limp and mushy…the only thing keeping my spirits up is my hydrangea paniculata ‘little lamb’ which has about 3 blooms. how is everything going to survive 2 more months of this?!
It’s incredibly dry and hot here in coastal Delaware. Moving sprinklers around all morning. We have a well so it’s always a conservation worry as well. Plants look desperate for water no matter how much I try to water but the weeds couldn’t be happier. How does that happen? Filled the birdbaths and the birds literally got in line for a bath…the cutest sight and they were all so polite or probably just dehydrated. Some potted transplants have yet to get into the garden and I feel so guilty. So darn hot, am missing my garden chores but not worth tempting heat stroke. And anyway, my reward for working in the garden last few days was a beaut of a wasp sting. Poor things are so crazed for water they’re hanging off the hoses and stinging me. Very painful sting, but I forgive them.
Welcome, Jeg220. Deranged, yes, and irrigation-system-less here, too. I hear you!
Welcome, Emily. How is everything going to survive is right. Deep soaking, then mulch, then more deep soaking, and on and on. (And crossing your fingers helps, too, as does an occasional rain dance.)
Welcome, Alesandra. Heat stroke time here, too. Have to really be careful right now — any chores I do are after supper or before breakfast this week. Caution!
Hope to see you all soon again.
It is so nice to hear other gardeners in the same boat! My dilemma is not so unusual, but my garden is entirely in containers on the patio of my rented apartment, so keeping up with watering in this 90-for-10-days spell we’re having is awfully challenging. I water before work, but when I get home everything is wilty and sad looking. If I water twice a day, though, the leaves start yellowing. Ack! Why can’t they just tell me what they want?!
I’ve moved the delicates (tomatoes and peppers) into the small bit of partial shade, other than right next to the porch we’ve got full sun most of the day on the whole patio, plus reflected heat off the bricks. One zucchini has succumbed, but that pot is just too darn heavy to move. The only things keeping me going are the green tomatoes on the plants I grew from seed – my first time with successful tomato seedlings! It would be more thrilling if they weren’t so wilty when I get home.
One hose leaks so badly that I have to put a pail under it and empty said pail every half hour so that the basment doesn’t flood. I use the pail water to water the plants that this hose can’t reach because the lead hose to my other hose is broken and I can’t detach it to replace it. I hate watering. I never water the grass, just the plants, poor wilted things.
Oh, my! Just what I need — a Wailing Wall! Almost exactly six months ago, we had 48 inches of snow in two back-to-back snowstorms. In the words of Francois Villon, Ou sont les neiges d’antan? They certainly haven’t left any lasting impression on this part of the mid-Atlantic. Dry? Just a trifle. Tired of hauling hose? I feel like a Volga boatman. I chose this summer to plant a Blushing Bride hydrangea next to the front door, and now I feel like the Cross Bridesmaid — that !@#$%%&& plant requires gallons of water every five minutes. Ready to throw in the trowel? Not quite yet, because I can’t find the trowel.
I’ve been having a throw-in-the-trowel moment for months. I would have thought starting a garden with nothing would have been easier then transforming one already there. Boy, was I wrong. So much open space, I don’t even know where to begin. It’s like going to a restaurant with a HUGE menu. I’m choiced into paralysis.
The lawn is quite crispy – if you like that sort of thing. No irrigation here either, we never thought we needed it. I am focusing on keeping the flowers and veggies alive and it is not an easy task this year.
I won’t throw a trowel just yet – there are lovely tomatoes on my plants. San Marzano, Risentraube and Brandywine and I am harvesting lots of basil and summer squash. One zucchini too! My melon plants are sending out runners all over and this is what keeps me going…
Trowels are being thrown left and right! Duck! Mine is in the air as well. Every spare minute is spent dragging hoses around to deep soak the saddest looking specimens. Hydrangea need hydrating! Astilbe need aspiration. May apples may perspire. Dahlias dally. Beastly!
Everything is toast here (in Delaware Co, NY), and I’m carrying water and hoses like everyone else. I have several perennials and shrubs purchased in May that are not yet planted. The ones that I heeled into a full-shade bed that want sun are looking pale. I haven’t cut back my catmint or geraniums yet, or tied up the William Baffin rose that’s taking over the back path. My bed of phlox and hydrangeas has been taken over by Cherry Bell campanulas (which look lovely at the moment, but what a mess!) I have an ever increasing scourge of lily of the valley in my shade garden. The bed of daylilies, lilies and Morning Light grasses that I did weed and mulch last week suffered an accidental side-swipe from my husband’s bushhog as he headed for the nearby field two days ago. (Four daylilies about to bloom cut off 2 inches from the ground!) The dogs ran through my Japanese irises and broke off several of the last blooms. Moles keep digging in my borders (but are doing a nice job of edging in a couple of places). I’m seeing the first of the Japanese beetles, and snails by the hundreds. Throw in the trowel indeed!
We have 3 baby robins in a nest on top of the light at the back door, baking in the hot afternoon sun, so I dug out our fancy patio umbrella yesterday morning and put it over them. The other yard-sale umbrella went into the chicken yard. The house is not air-conditioned either, so we’re baking as well. Hanging on for Saturday when it’s supposed to only be in the mid-70′s here and a 50% chance of at least some rain.
I can’t keep up with the weeds and animals to see what is in my gardens! I have massive mugwort infestation in the vegetable garden. There are also twin fawns living in our yard, and the biggest rabbit I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s the size of a dog! I now have a vegetable patch full of stems, with immature peppers and tomatoes and beans hanging off them. No leaves, just fruit. They got the pea stems (not the peas themselves) early on. And the lettuce. The strawberry patch is long gone.
Now the heat. Should I water my shriveling, leafless vegetables? I don’t think it matters at this point. SIGH!! I would like to throw my trowel at the wildlife!
The buckets of weeds that I pulled up forth of july weekend and the constant watering in this drought still don’t compare to my deer problem. The deer are pretty much the most frustrating thing. I’m constantly trying “deer resistant plants”. My peonies were their latest victim. They’re just sticks in the ground now. I had stakes and deer netting protecting a still young apple tree that they infiltrated by ramming it until the netting broke. They got in my fenced vegetable garden through my patio (which is suprising that they would be brave enter such an enclosed space). They ate my grapes, some tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes. Thanks goodness the majority of my garden is still okay. One thing I’m learning is that the deer will never give up.
I really tried to spread the mulch that I purchased hopefully in April. This job will just have to wait for a little rain. I too have plants that were purchased in hopes of clumping some lovely flowers…..still wating in their pots. TOO HOT, TOO HOT and too much guilt in watering!
Hey, but you have to remember that summer is exactly what we dreamed of and yearned for all winter long….and since winter is so much longer than summer (usually) I am going to enjoy it. Even though every day is like a swedish sauna my health should be excellent and my garden should be just as healthy if I keep at it. I do have to water every day now, but I have very healthy new clematis seeds to plant and all of our boxwood is doing great!
My only complaint is japanese beetles on the roses…..and grabbing their hairy legs and dropping them in a bucket of water.
Welcome, Christine. You have my permission to toss any and all garden tools at the pests. :) To my mind, there are almost no deer-proof plants, so I have a giant fence around the whole yard. I gave up fighting with them years ago, when I had gotten to the point where I was actually screaming and tossing things (as if they even blinked).
Welcome, Carole. Everything I watered yesterday is lying down today. Huh? Just too relentless our for me to even make a difference, I guess, but onward I trudge, dragging hoses behind me.
See you both soon again, I hope.
Misery does indeed love company. I’m ready to throw in the towel, growing impatient for summer vegetables (only spinach, arugula, kale and snap peas so far) and for the bank account to recover enough to finish planting my flower/herb/shrub bed between the patio and vegetable garden. I’m 8 months pregnant and I cannot bend anymore to keep up with the weeds or successive planting. Just trying to keep my 2-year old from picking all the flowers herself and the 2-year-old visiting labrador away from my beds struggling to get established.
If any tomatoes/raspberries/zucchini/beans/squash/pumpkins/cucumbers ripen I’ll have a harvest party for my friends who can still reach the ground. I’m in Denver, CO.
been venting since April…have a bunny infestation stealing my time, energy , money and plants. In the words of Brun Hilda aka Elmer Fudd …..kill the wabbit. killl the wabbit, kill the rabbit!!! If only I could…sigh
Welcome Cheryl. Now how do you feel about that rabbit again? :) I have one, too, and it’s so hot out I can’t even deal with the Havahart routine. Someday…or maybe I’ll tell Jack the cat to get with it. See you soon again I hope.
It looks like a big tooth that is shooting out water…I love it! Matti
We had such a lovely, damp, cool June that I got entirely spoiled and this week’s 90+ degree weather has caused me to wilt and complain. All my grandiose plans for a vegetable garden went down the drain, and I’m left with just a dozen pots and hanging baskets which I water morning and night.
Can I say that it is so nice to hear that others’ eyes were bigger than their wills when it came to putting plants in the ground? I have two six-packs of kale I haven’t planted and which seem unwilling to die. It’s going to be a battle between the heat and my guilt, I think–will I put it off long enough? Will their pitiful wilty bodies force my conscience to plug them into the ground?
Here in Oregon the summer drought is a yearly occurance, an oddity that gives us a “Mediterranean” season in what most folks assume is a lush and rainy climate. I also struggle with the dreamed-of borders that don’t play out quite as elegantly in reality as they did in my winter and spring fantasies; soil that drains like a loamy dream but doesn’t hold moisture, requiring loads (literally) of mulch; husbands with power tools cutting down my babies; and the multitudes of potted plants awaiting a taste of soil.
I will confess to having certain plants in pots (black plastic, not nicer ones) for years, people– my ex was a nurseryman and we collected a lot of choice plants, many he left with me. I learned to feed and water them frequently, and keep them alive and doing well enough if not thriving in their limited environs. I had a lot of guilt at first but as time passed I planted for a few more every year. I recently put a lovely Japanese hornbeam in the ground and it was in a pot for 8 years! Yeah, crazy, I know! Some advice I can pass on: repot! It’s not as much work as you think, and it will relieve some of your guilt at not planting your green friends, as well as extending the time you have to find a place for it. And, learn to let the guilt go, the plants are not bad-vibing you!
Welcome, Matti. Love your description — very funny. Yes, my old tag-sale stool is a key part of my watering gear here. Nice to “meet” you and do come say hi again soon.
Welcome, Tertarose. Repotting is very good advice, and I always am ashamed when I go to do it to a plant and see a thick tangle of roots and little soil and realize what a stress I have been causing by skipping the step for to long a period. Nice to see you here and hope to again soon.
Magaret,
I love following your blog, I garden on the eastern end of long island. In looking at your slide show I noticed your stone patio( like mine) and I wondered, how do you keep the weeds and grasses from growing between the stones or do you have plantings there?
Hi, Lunar. I weed! Using stone dust (versus soil) as the base for the pavers may make it a little less hospitable at first, but mostly it’s an ongoing job of weeding the most vulnerable cracks with a big old serrated kitchen knife a few times a season.