Watering On

As the hot weather lingers and our drought continues, I spend oodles of time in the company of hoses.  Hoses, by the way, can be cantankerous.  I swear they have a mind of their own and know just when to kink (usually when I am over 100' away) making me hike all the way back to find out why the water has stopped flowing.   I have to admit, though, I'm always glad it's just a kink and not a dry well causing the problem.

Don't you love it when pulling a hose across the yard you come up just a few inches short of your target?  And then you look back and see you've just bent over or broke off a prized plant when you gave the stubborn hose an impatient yank?

Ok, never mind,  maybe that only happens to me.

I was trying to climb down from the top of the Quarry Hill tonight with the sprinkler in one hand and 50' of hose coiled up in the other.   Stepping from rock to rock trying not to behead lilies, break off the rudbeckias and maim the dwarf conifers along with getting my two flat feet back on the ground in one piece was a tall order, but I made it without falling on my face (or my derriere).

Though they are blooming their little hearts out, the plants aren't thriving.  Water from the well is not the same as rain.

I was watering the River Bed annuals this afternoon and the sun was blazing away drying up the water before it even got down to the root zone.  I finally located a watering wand that doesn't leak AND has a handy shut off valve, which was an amazing feat around here. 

The lilies are planted much deeper, but there isn't much moisture down there, either.

Yesterday we took a little ride in the afternoon.  Joel went kayaking with Allison and a friend after work and we decided to be the second car and follow them up to the river and move Joel's car and trailer down to the bottom get out point.  That way they didn't need two vehicles.  This was my idea; it was just too hot in the afternoon for Carl to stand out by Aaargh and whack rocks around.  We both were glad of the break to sit in an air-conditioned car taking in some scenery.

Yes, Carl's almost always in uniform and he prefers long sleeves to short, no matter how hot the weather.  (No sunburns for him, Smart Man!)

One thing that has been really weird this summer is Mother Nature's dispensation of the rain that has fallen.  Though we have had less than an inch of precipitation since the beginning of June, there are other places nearby who have been inundated.  We only traveled about 50 miles from home yesterday evening and there were people who hadn't mowed their lawns in quite some time because of standing water.  I even saw one lawn mower hopelessly mired in mud.  Wow, how strange, our lawn is a crispy critter and a dozen miles away, they're floating.

And in some cases, wondering what hit them.  I was wondering that myself as I stared at a field that looked trampled and yet not harvested........what in the world happened there and what sort of crop was it?  And then as we traveled further, I saw a corn field hammered down to less than a foot tall and knew the reason..........

Hail.

Oh, my, the damage was exceptionally bad.  The farmer in me was horrified.  The corn leaves were shredded to tatters and the stalks were all bent and broken.  The corn had been over 5' tall and now it was destroyed.  That's when I realized the field I'd seen earlier was also hail ravaged.  Before the storm, the field had been an emerald green oasis of lush soybeans.  A few minutes with wind-driven hail had turned a bumper crop into a muddy mass of flattened leaves and crushed stems.  A total loss.  

On our little trip we drove past well-watered corn fields in one mile only to go over a hill and see yet another field where the plants were all 'pineappled'........meaning the leaves were curled tightly and sticking straight up, like a pineapple plant, which is what field corn does when it is drought-stressed.  Some of the corn could make a comeback IF it received adequate rainfall very soon, but many fields we saw were already past the stage of no return.  When corn takes on a pale, pineappled, crepe papery look there's not much hope for it, especially if the crop is young.  Once a corn field grows tall enough to shade its own rows the field can withstand a little more drought and heat than when the plants are smaller and the sun beats down on the soil.   A little, but not a lot.

And that's what the forecast is for the weekend.  A little rain, maybe.......but not a lot.  Nothing widespread, if you're in the path of a storm, you might get wet.  If you're not, well, so sad, too bad.    And temps in the 90's again.  Oh, well, like Mark Twain said, "Everybody complains about the weather but nobody does anything about it."

I guess we might as well save our breath and stop complaining.  I took some more pictures of the lilies today.  (And Carl took pictures of me taking pictures, the sneaky guy.)

The fragrance is almost overpowering.  (The lilies, that is.  I, on the other hand, do not smell so good after a long day in the hot sun.)

We just have to appreciate what is blooming right now and hope for the best. 

 
We may be between a rock and a hard place, but that's gardening, isn't it?  We have to adapt.  They're just flowers, not crops.

My heart goes out to the farmers whose livelihoods depend on their harvest. 

"Consider the lilies of the field; they neither toil nor spin."

All we can do is hope and pray for the best.

Time for a rest, I have a doctor's appointment coming up tomorrow.  Oh, goody.......... wish me luck!