So happy that we can officially declare Summer over! We were very lucky last week with a delightful 20 mils of rain. It certainly couldn’t be declared a drought breaker, there is still no feed for anything and the ground is a hard concrete block, but the grass took on a greenish hue (that whose roots hadn’t died) and we’ve had some more small showers and drizzle to keep the colour coming.
Even though it did apparently nothing to the ground moisture below an inch or so, its incredible how happy it made the plants.(those whose roots hadn’t died). And how happy it makes the gardeners! An end is in sight!
So in this spirit of hope we have decided to have our first open day since December at the end of the month. We have seriously big perennials available, which will quickly fill bare patches in the garden! Daily water and hot sun for 3 months equals plants bursting to be planted. The roses are also growing at great rates in their pots and have been producing the first of the sublime autumn flowers, which are always my favourites.
The roses in the garden are weathering the continued lack of moisture with brave faces…we have been very lucky down here with very low humidity most of the time (I believe this is not the case further North) so the disease has pretty much only been some blackspot and mildew due to water starvation. Many of the roses lost most of their leaves and stayed bare for the duration, but now they can sense Autumn and hopefully its associated rains coming, they are leafing and budding up for an Autumn show.
14 weeks post surgery I am gaining some normality at last, ie I can walk without support…but am still many months away from full recovery, so can only do short bursts in the garden at a time. This is the great thing about the drought…weeds haven’t been sprouting! So the garden will look respectable with a bit of amendment of spent or dead perennials. That is respectable by drought standards…Anyone thinking of coming to have a nosy or an autumn buy up, please don’t expect a show garden!!! Four months on the bench and with pretty much no rain for 3 months does not equal a pretty picture! Lots of dead bits on roses and dead things in garden…if you are experiencing the same drought prepare to feel much better about your own garden!