Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Hard, hot days

Ironweed

This is hard. Real hard. Since early May, we've hardly had any rain and every day temps in the high 90s or sometimes 100-plus degrees. Even if we put faucet water on plants that are struggling, it does little good. At least during our 2011 drought, the dryness and heat started later in the season. Last summer we KNEW we were blessed to have the rains that we did, even in August. It was amazing! Now here we are with no rain in sight. My mother's water well struggles. How many others have dried up? And yet we continue to build, build, build, and bring more people into a region that cannot support the rapid growth. I'm trying to be optimistic. As they say, this, too, shall pass. But it's just hard right now. Real hard.

Salvia
The Meadow...very few wildflowers this past spring.

Antelope horns

Zizotes (milkweed)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I empathize. Where I live in east Texas it's feast or famine in terms of rain, which makes it hard to know what to plant. I, too, have been thinking about 2011.--At the end of that summer, I read there was no detectable soil moisture in Travis county (where I used to live). I moved here for the deeper soil and more rain (45"/yr), but have learned rain is not dependable. We might get 4" in a day and then nothing for 3 months. I am watering certain plants, but leave plants like Turk's Cap and Inland Sea Oats to fend for themselves. Wish I had a crystal ball!

Yoli B said...

May I know which Ironweed is planted in your wildscape?

Sheryl Smith-Rodgers said...

We have western and woolly ironweeds. We planted them on either side of our Blanco crabapple tree. Now we have a hybridized ironweed.

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