gardening

our May weather has been abysmal for weekend gardening for those of us working for a living... two weekends in a row very rainy and then this past last weekend EXTREMELY hot and humid - hi 80-90 and very humid  coupled with a few weeks of CRAZY BUSY times at work.

no heat relief from this past weekend until of course today after a HUGE front moved thru last night drenching everything and making this morning's preparing for work like living in a sauna.  leading to lots of crankiness in this writer who does NOT do well in high heat and humidity (having had enough of that in Louisiana thank you)

and its way too soon to put in the window a/c units - they block the fresh air and the cats' perches on the window sills (taking up two of the three windows they can sit in and watch the outside world, in particular, birds and squirrels and the occasional night visit by the local possum and raccoons).   not to say the huge cost of running them - even as efficient as they are and as frugally as they are used.  they dont go in until the long heat waves of July and August. 

however, it was a huge waste of a weekend - temps in the apartment reached 90 in the study and bedroom - being the two interior rooms with no windows - and thus sleeping was a disaster both fri and sat nites.  sun nite was better with the bright idea borne from desperation to put a window fan in the window in the hallway across from the bedroom and thus bring in the cooler air during the all night rainstorm - humid but a bit cooler at least - and supplemented with another strong fan in the loft bed, the night was marginally better than the previous two albeit very noisy - although right now am really craving a nap.  supposedly the front moves in this afternoon  (its only 70 with humdity slightly under 60% so hope springs that it will be cooler tonight - prediction is low 50s ... please gods and goddesses of weather). 

so while there was not much to do in the garden in the way of landscape or hardscaping after last fall's event, there is always ongoing maintenance and dealing with the things that were moved around (plants were moved in haste and plants are waiitng in pots to be planted in new homes).  way behind now due to the aforementioned weather problems from the last few weekends, next weekend threatens rain on sat (50%) but sunday supposedly clearer,

fingers crossed there will be time next weekend to attend to the remaining surviving perennials and plan the very reduced herb garden (half of the herbs were destroyed last fall or didn't survive the winter uprooted and huddled in pots, space has been reduced by 2/3).  if it rains next weekend, a day or half day off may have to be taken to deal with these plants before they give up. 

just looking at this week's forecast, maybe a few after work sessions to catch up... once i recover tonight from the sleeplessness of the past weekend. 

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one sad side affect of this very hot weather so soon is the roses - there were many buds and they were progressing nicely when BAM the heat wave triple acclerated the bloom process... so from a tight bud on thursday then to a very open bloom on saturday - cut many late yesterday before the storm last night destroyed them totally -- unfortunately due to the high temps in my apt they are all almost done. so sad as i wait all year for these roses to bloom only to have them last one day. sigh. not a great start to the month. 

more rose photos here