Haha Ric! I washed Darcy's car (at the carwash).
Yardening late May 2015
Don't know how much we got, BUT, it sure sounded great.
Flash floods and storms predicted here today/night. 1-3 inches
I'd love to get at least an inch. Better than nothing but I'm sure it will all be in a giant down burst.
Flash flood predictions seem to be a bit east of Leesburg. Too bad, that kind of rain volume would surely help the pond fill up now that the stack is repaired.
Not sure if we got any rain?? I haven't been outside yet to see.....
Need to mow the lawn! If it is still dry--I may just do that first thing.
G.
Looking like this next system will bring some thunderstorms early and then followed by some steady showers. But I don't want to jinx us so I'll say it's all going to evaporate coming over the mountain in WV and we won't get diddly squat.
Ugh, I hate it when that happens CAM. The same thing happens to us up here, especially with snow in the winter. I like snow so it's annoying. You'd think it'd be no big deal because the aren't even 'mountains'. Can you imagine what it was like here when the Appalachians were 12000'? It must have been a desert where we live now like in eastern Washington state.
Yeah, Jeff... I watch the radar sometimes and see a system moving from west to east and as it comes over the mountains, it breaks up and then there isn't enough moisture in the hair to keep them from evaporating and they just disappear.
Doesn't look like the case today though. System is strong and a lot of pop up storms are going to develop this side of the mountains. So good luck !
Yeah, I'm starting to be able to see the boundary line set up and there are several miniscule pop ups right now. Good luck to you too...LOL
By mid afternoon, we could see a whole slew of thunderstorms pop up and head in our direction. Would prefer a nice steady, soaking rain but won't complain. :)
Lol...you know what they say about beggars....
Exactly! :)
I spent a lot of time today putting all my trays and pots of unplanted flowers
under my patio roof so they don't get drowned and beaten up by the upcoming storm.
Took all my cushions off the chairs and my Swing and piled them up on the chairs
by my big table under the roof.
Here it is--almost an hour of steady rumbling--going all around us.
A "doomsday" sky hanging around..but no rain yet. I swear--it will come ant minute!
Radio said AA Co. got it bad already. Did you, Sally? As did areas to the North.
We NEED some real rain around here--so I won't have to water plants all day long!
Those days are few and ear between....
At least it is supposed to be ONLY in the 70's tomorrow. YES!!!!
Here are a couple views of my roofed over patio for you newbies to see
what i am talking about. NOT all from the same year--but still recent..
Nice refuge to work under in bad weather--and, as soon as walk under there--
the temps are 10* lower than anywhere else--as I have the 2 trees shading the back yard.
Last picture is of my HUGE Silver Maple taken from the street. The cause of all my
gardening woes--but also the giver of all the nice shade.
My house is on the left--and the Pakistani house is on my right--with her 6' fence all around it.
G.
AHHHH! The rains just arrived!!! It is pouring down! It is 6:45PM.
G ♥
Much more coming tonight around the area too, Gita.
The Grands Lily & Lucas were here for the day. We had a great time, they just love playing on the rocks, exploring the juniper hedge and swimming in the pool between rain storms. They helped me make a pot person. I think it still needs a bit of work and I am thinking of adding ivy arms. I also got a few small jobs done in the back yard while they were swimming. Mostly cleaning the tropical plants, gathering things up and putting them away, even got one of the big blue pots planted.
Great pics, Holly... thanks for sharing !
Should be a lot of happy gardeners around the area tonight. Lots of rain falling on the Mid Atlantic area tonight !
Glad you enjoyed the grandis. Looks like you had fun :-)
We've been getting some decent rain today. Thank the Lord! Not sure how much yet because my rain gauge needs to be moved from under our Honeylocust.
Great pics, Holly.
Rain here- lots of it- no terrible side effects that I've heard of anyway. I set up buckets and a rain barrel, curious to see how they fill.
Wonderful pics Holly, LOVE the shades on the finished product, makes him look like "Mr. Cool". =) Such beautiful Grandies too; I'm glad you had such a wonderful time!
WOW did it rain and storm here last night, it was wonderful!! So glad some of that wet stuff finally decided to visit down this way. I swear the tomato plant on the deck is a foot taller than it was before I went to bed last night. =)
Off to work I go, have a great day everyone! =)
Woooo.... that was some GOOD rain and it's still lightly raining this morning. Hope everyone got as much as we did or more !
WooHoo! We got 1.8"s in the last 36 hours. Even my 15k gallon rain barrel is full. LOL I have a rain water recovery connected to the pool, which still needed at least a foot of water. It's now over the top of the skimmer. Last year we didn't have to fill from the well at all!
Teri, this should help your pond, a lot.
This message was edited Jun 2, 2015 8:12 AM
That's great Ric! I think we're closer to 1.25" but I'm still happy about that.
It was funny! The storms yesterday were so localized that during one good soaker we also had bright sunshine. There is still a light rain falling and it's soothingly cool out.
We got more rain in the last 24 hours than in all of May. Yippee!
What a swing in weather!
Chilly this morning....predicted highs are only in the low 60's.
I can't decide whether to wear long pants and some long sleeve top
for work today???? After all--I will be outside all day....
Hoping there won't be a whole lot to water....just the under cover tables...
I'm in at 10AMtoday--so the early people will have watered what is necessary.
May be able to work on putting stock out on the shelves...it gets so backed up.
G.
Catching up... somehow I got 2 weeks behind on this thread! I'm going to jump down to this post with comments as I read along, so it may be pretty disjointed.
Gita, my tropical milkweed seeds needed heat to sprout, and they have been very slow growers. Put yours in a warm spot and see what happens!
CAM, the extended bed around the side looks great! You won't regret moving that Natchez... Mine is about 8 feet from the house, and there are a couple of branches I need to cut back because they have reached the siding and the roof. Keep limbing it up as it grows, and you'll have a beautiful multi-trunked tree. :-)
Yes, iris dividing should wait until mid to late summer, when the plants pretty much go dormant. For anybody who needs more info, I wrote an article on dividing irises. They're probably the easiest plant to divide, so no worries if you haven't tried it. If you can snap a carrot in half, you can split rhizomes apart!
The FSK rhizome sales are 7/11 (Watson's, somewhere near Baltimore) and 7/18 (DPF in Frederick)... I added them to the "events" sticky thread.
Not as much garden chat to catch up on as I'd thought when I saw how long this thread had gotten! :-)
We got several inches of rain here, too, and unfortunately the drain in the basement stairwell got clogged... draining fine again now, but we have a big mess where a lot of water came in under the door. That's happened a couple of times now... wish we had a higher sill under the door, but then I'd probably trip over it.
Plants and grass are looking lush!
Thanks, Jill, appreciate you pointing out I had it too close to the foundation. Lots of room for it now and it gave me room to make a nice looking bed behind it. :)
With your other comments about pruning, I did think it was possible you were going for an espaliered crepe myrtle... ;-) The colors it will develop on its trunk will look wonderful against your brick. It's a great choice!
I bought a couple of the newer hybrid crepe myrtles, and there's no sign of life from them yet... might be time to find the receipt and pull them up.
Haha... talk about Crape Murder ! I would never do that, let alone to a CM ! :)
Holly, your grandchildren are so cute and you all looked like you had so much fun! I'm really looking to having grandkids, though I don't know for sure that either daughter plans to have kids.
I'm up in Connecticut right now so I don't know how much we got in Vienna; my daughter said it was raining hard though. I can't wait to see how much things shot up while I was gone!
Muddy, hopefully you will have Grands in your life but you never know only 2 of my 4 children made the decision to have children. Our youngest Jamie provided the 1st Grandchild so we waited quite a while before we had one. All I can say is that I had great fun with my children but Grands are even more fun.
I did have 3 CM, When I got the first one I thought I could just prune it into a tree shape and if I kept after the new shoots I would have a tree. Yeah that sure didn't work. I can only seem to keep the taller branches alive for a couple of years and then they die out and I have to start new ones that then die back to be replaced. I have finally come to the realization that what I have is a bush and it is going to stay a bush. Now the question is do I want to see if I can find a hardy to zone 6 tree form that will stay a tree. I understand that Natchez is one of those, I wonder if there are others? If I do get a CM tree form I would want it where the bush is so it will need to be removed and the new tree put in that spot, also if I replace this one where will I plant it?
Then there is the dwarf that I have been successfully growing in a pot left outside all year round that did not come back this year.
Holly, the U.S. National Arboretum, which bred and introduced CM 'Natchez', lists it as a Zone 7-9 plant. My CMs are being very slow to leaf out this year, and I think some branches might have died; I can't tell yet. I guess my point is that if I were you, I would stick with what I had.
http://www.usna.usda.gov/Newintro/natchez.pdf
Thanks Muddy, It's a pretty big tree, too. Not sure I realized that it would get quite that big. When we were on the bus tour we stopped at Surreybrooke Gardens and they had a pretty good size one growing there and I mentioned that they could grow things I couldn't in their Zone 7 and she told me they are Zone 6 and that her's was a Natchez. That's where I got the first idea I could grow them. Then on the Garden Club Garden Tour one of the houses had 2 nice size ones in their yard. That was a city yard, I always think city yards have a little warmer micro clime. I will say that I do like my hot pink blooms better than the white but I just love that bark.
Maybe you are right, might be best to let that dream go and just enjoy my beautiful bush.
Anybody still want more rain ? Geez, my plants are so happy I can hear them singing. And my grass is so green, looks like it did in April again. :)) Put some of the Coreopsis in the ground last night that just arrived from Bluestones and I was digging in mud.
I'll take more rain CAM, just next week...LOL. I do feel like I'm starting to mold a bit. It started raining on my drive to York today. I don't much care for this 'cold' weather either. I am very much a fan of the upper 80s. Not to mention there is a bunch of new things blooming that I haven't been able to take pics of yet since it's been raining nearly everyday when I get home from work this week.
Good chance of more in our area on Monday/Tuesday, so you may get your wish. :)
I'm loving this three day break from the heat.... I would love to live in the Pacific Northwest where rain and moderate temps are the norm. But I'm weird that way, I know. haha
Maybe but keep in mind you don't get rain in the summer in the PNW. Not to mention that they don't have as high of a heat zone as we do so they can't grow some of our summer favorites.
Really can't we have some balance here. First it was all bone dry now I can't get out there to get much done because it won't stop raining. LOL I did get some weeding done in the yard while the ground was nice and wet. Went out this morning thinking thinking I would get a little more of that weeding done but all I got done was tying up the clem that I had let wander and then it started to rain