(Via Snappy's Gardens Blog)

Posted by admin to allotment, rain on 2008-03-26, 11:18:00

Mud, mud, glorious mud.. It rained virtually the whole time I was up at the allotment today. The third bed has been forked over.It needs double digging when it drys up.
I added some sand to the boggy first bed by the compost bin. Even simple turning the soil has made the drainage improve slightly.It needs to be dry before I can remove the weed roots and devil grass that is encased in clay..
Three and a half hours later and I was tired so I stopped. On the way out I met Mr Saddiq the guy who has the one third of the allotment. He seemed impressed by the transformation of the wilderness that has bordered his.
He says I can dig his beds over once I have done mine! The Two thirds I have done has taken three weeks so far.The last third is covered with the black tarpaulin.
He actually drove me back afterwards to the house, and saw the garden at the same time. He is going away for four weeks, I wander how much will be done when he returns?
The reason I have the allotment is that he told the allotment lady that he would give up the two thirds so another person could have one, as there is a long waiting list!
The recipient of that charitable urge was me, so once I have cleared my half tamed wilderness I will tidy up his beds and plant some onions, and courgettes for him (I have two Onion sets, more than enough for both plots).
Its going to rain for the rest of my days off so tomorrow is plant shopping at Swillington with Hils and Cat.
Here is to Mud and Charity :)

(Via Snappy's Gardens Blog)

Posted by admin to hellebore niger, rain, seed packets on 2008-01-21, 08:03:00

I am off finally after four night shifts. The photo is of the Hellebore after the torrential rain that fell last night and this morning. The local rivers of the Calder and Aire are near to bursting their banks in places.
The soil is waterlogged in places. No early veg seed sowing for a while yet. Its made me think I want to raise the right border by a foot. If it does rain then it will drain away easier.
You can see the White flowered Heather, and the house warming Cyclamen behind the Birds sunken water dish.
I want a bigger water dish I think as the reflective element of still water is good. Its very calming the water reflecting plants and flowers below the real ones. The earthly ones above, and the magical shimmering reflected plants below. Very Heaven and Earth like.
Bird seed that has been left on the soil has germinated. I have a pot full of germinated bird seeds growing into some kind of grass.
I can see daffodils, tulips, and crocus pushing their way up out of the soil and windowbox. The big blue pot with the mystery bulbs has a baby Muscari. The small grape like flower bud is visible now after the rain battered the strappy leaves, exposing it at the base.
I saw my Robin today, but otherwise the birds have been hiding in the trees. I saw three Chaffinches fly to the fir tree and sit, but they moved away before my camera came out.
I have two days off to reacquaint myself with the garden and the birds. There is weeding to be done, and plans made to raise the borders. The African bag gardens are here and need some things buying so I can construct them for the pavers.
I will sort out my seed packets and photograph how many I actually have. I might even suprise myself with how many I actually have. Bought seed packets, and other seeds loose in envelopes and pharmacy brown bottles... like Calendula, Aquilegia's, Poppies, and Snapdragons I remember...
Thats my reflections after work and rain :)

(Via Country Gardener)

Posted by admin to high temperatures, rain, summer solstice on 2007-09-29, 18:17:00

Things are looking up: the past week brought us 9/10ths of an inch of rain over two days. It's amazing how quickly the lawn responds and starts looking good again. (Yes, unfashionable is it may be, I care about my lawn too.)

The fall colors are coming on in the trees and shrubs, and they are looking pretty nice, not just brown, as I feared. Still, the general dry trend continues, and next week's predicted daily high temperatures are around the 24-degree Celcius mark. That's 10 degrees above normal. (For you F-folks, that's 75 degrees, and almost 15 degrees warmer than is normal for the first week of October.)

It may be October in a couple of days, but that darned summer just won't quit.

(Via Country Gardener)

Posted by admin to September, drought, fading flowers, rain, renovation on 2007-09-04, 19:04:00

As September arrives and the gardening season begins to wind down, there's beauty in the fading away, such as these prairie coneflowers from our meadow. I belong to a camera club and a few of us got together on Sunday morning to try to photograph monarch butterflies at the meadow. Alas, the butterflies eluded us, but the fading flowers were lovely. This was my favorite picture from that morning.

I haven't posted much lately, as we have started a major house renovation. We are getting a new kitchen (very exciting, as I've never had a great kitchen ever).

The complication is that we are moving the kitchen space to another part of the house and what was the kitchen until now will become a bedroom.

For various reasons - the kitchen move, repairs, updates, space for the fridge - five rooms are involved. We have done a lot of moving in the past few days, and the only livable space right now is the study, where we are sleeping and the living room. I have converted the main floor laundry room into a provisional kitchen, with microwave, kettle and coffee maker.

The old range is going down to the furnace room tomorrow, so I will be able to do more than microwave dinners. There are some nice garden fresh tomatoes begging to be made into sauce.

Wish us luck: by my birthday in mid-October, we should be ready to move into the new kitchen and updated bedroom.

PS: As for rain, we are still in drought mode. There hasn't been a drop since the wonderful rain on Aug. 25. The extended forecast shows dry, dry, dry to past mid-September.

(Via Country Gardener)

Posted by admin to rain, rainfall, raining on 2007-08-25, 10:58:00

View from patio on our back hill - note brown lawn in background
As many others were contending with record rainfall and flooding, we stayed dry. But today, we finally got a decent rain: 2/10ths of an inch overnight, plus 8/10ths this morning. And as I post this in the early afternoon, it's raining again!

In my neighborhood, we're all thrilled after a gardening season that turned dry in mid-May and stayed parched through the entire summer. As my neighbor Rose put it in her email to me just now: NICE RAIN, SOOOOOOOO HAPPY!!!!!

PS: Total rainfall from Thursday to today, 1 and 8/10ths of an inch (most of it today). This is most rain we've had in a week since April. Even the creek is flowing again.

(Via Country Gardener)

Posted by admin to lightning, rain, thunderstorm on 2007-08-23, 01:29:00

Click on the radar map to view bigger
4:30 a.m.: Wake to thunder and lightning and then finally some rain falling around 5 a.m. I take a cup of tea and sit outside on the front porch bench while it comes down. It feels like balm for the soul. When it's over, the rain gauge shows 3/10ths of an inch. More in the forecast for later this morning, around 11 a.m. We'll see.

10 a.m.: Another small thunderstorm cell passing through. We get maybe half a tenth of an inch more, which doesn't quite take the rain gauge to 4/10ths.

Meanwhile, south of the border, more reports of flooding through many parts of the American mid-west. It's hard to believe that we are still so dry.

My friend from Michigan reports:

There's massive flooding in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Ohio. Some parts of those states have received 14 inches of rain with 5 inches on Tuesday, alone. We are lucky to have been on the outskirts of the storm. it's hard to believe that you - in a rather direct line east of here, have no rain. I'm actually beginning to believe the US weather maps that have only white above
the northern US border. There is no weather in Canada, only hot or cold.

(Via Country Gardener)

Posted by admin to drought stress, forecast, rain, sprinkler, water truck on 2007-08-21, 18:36:00

Today I actually thought I was losing it. My impression of the last few days was that I hadn't watered a lot, and so I didn't bother to check the cistern before putting the sprinkler on my shade garden. As a result I almost burned out the pump because I let the water level get down to the dregs. This was the first time all summer I've made that mistake. I guess I'm pretty tired of it all, but I did call the Water Truck for a refill - again.

The picture above from Canada's Weather Network shows our 14-day trend forecast. You'll notice that it indicated rain for today. The day's done, as for the rain, well, you know the story: it didn't materialize. The rest of August looks equally dismal.

The title of this post comes from one of the kind comments I received from a blog reader in Washington. It's so true: drought will do that to you. I was interested to discover that mental health researchers in Australia have actually coined a word, solastalgia, for drought stress as it affects people.

PS: Here's a link to article about solastalgia as a human response to environmental stress by Glenn Albrecht, an Australian researcher in environmental health. It's a bit academic, but fascinating.

(Via Country Gardener)

Posted by admin to monsoon, rain, trace on 2007-08-20, 18:55:00

Click on picture to view bigger size
I don't live by gardening alone, and so I follow quite a few blogs that have nothing to do with gardening. My favorite is The Online Photographer by Mike Johnston, who writes beautifully on photography and many other topics. Anyway, today he reports:

On the home front, here in Wisconsin it's monsoon season. We don't actually have a monsoon season, or at least not usually, but that hasn't stopped it from raining for three days straight...

Then my friend Sandy from Michigan emailed the following:

It's still dark and misty outside but I think the bulk of the rain is over for now. There were 4.25 inches in the gauge at 4:30. However, there is rain in the forecast for Tuesday as well as 90 degree temperatures by midweek. We were concerned because the sump pump has not engaged even once since the rain started. After checking, we found that the sump crock is still nearly dry! Weather report says the rain is related to the tropical storm (Erin) so maybe there's hope that you'll get a few inches as well.

What I wouldn't give for such a rain! Come on you folks south of the border: Why are you hogging all the rain? Send some up here.

Actually, there was some rain in southern Ontario today around the London area, but it didn't reach up this way. Tomorrow looks to be more of the same: a trace is forecast, but many inches are needed. The map above shows just how little rain there has been over the past 30 days.

So far in August we've had barely half an inch, and that fell within the first week. Since then: nothing.

(Via Country Gardener)

Posted by admin to front garden, pictures, rain, showers, swallows on 2007-08-12, 16:12:00

I start the morning off by taking some pictures of the front garden, which is full of grasses and Russian sage. This picture, I take from the loft of the barn where we have a high window propped open so the barn swallows can fly in and out even when we have the barn doors closed.

As I set up my camera on the tripod, a pair of barn swallows gets the surprise of their lives when they find me at the window. Oooops: abort landing, bank sharply right and head for the open door below. Then, the chatter begins, and continues the entire time I'm up there.

The afternoon brings a shower, but very little rain: only 1/10th of an inch. We were going to get the firehoses out again to water the front garden, but we just didn't get around to it - it's a big and heavy job (now I know why fire fighters need to be so burly) - maybe tomorrow night. It's exhausting, all this watering.

Next chance for rain? The Weather Network predicts "a few showers" for Thursday. Yeah, right...

A closer view of some the front garden plants

(Via Country Gardener)

Posted by admin to Ontario, drought, extreme dryness, rain, record dry on 2007-08-08, 08:21:00

Yesterday's rainfall amounted to 4/10ths of an inch in total, but it stayed cloudy, cooler and dampish all day, which was a blessed relief.

Here's the Agriculture Canada drought map for southern Ontario again, now updated to Aug. 6. Red means record dry, and brown extremely dry. (We are in the record dry patch under where it says "Toronto" - close to the tip of Lake Ontario.)

We're now in the middle of a heat and humidity wave that looks like it won't break for another five days. After that, the 14-day forecast shows warm and dry to August 22.

I hate to go on and on about drought, but unfortunately this summer it is the issue that dominates my life. I haven't given up fighting back with the hoses. Sure, my garden beds are filled with mostly drought-tolerant perennials and ornamental grasses, but even those plants can't keep going (let alone look good) when it doesn't rain for months. But what's really heartbreaking is what this extreme dryness is doing to all the trees and shrubs that I just can't water.

The bottom line: I can't wait for winter and a good, long break from all this. What a cruel summer for plants and gardeners! Of course, the farmers have it much worse. At least we gardeners don't depend on rain for a living.