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Time to face the heat

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It’s almost 9 pm and I’m gearing up to go outside and begin watering my garden.

It’s been a very hot day. It’s finally dropped down to 30 Celsius (86 F) but with humidity it’s still 36 Celsius (96.8). Wish me luck!

I didn’t water yesterday even though it’d been hot all day. We’d watered really well on Sunday evening. I figured I could let it go a day, even a hot day, but I certainly can’t let it go for two days when it’s this unbearably warm outside!

The one good thing about going out at this time is that my elderly stalker hopefully won’t notice me. If she does she’ll come and stare at me while I water. The staring isn’t so bad it’s when she talks and I can’t hear her so I have to keep stopping what I’m doing just to find out that she asked if today was Tuesday or to say “no rain, no rain” again for the third time that day.

She watched Chris and I all day Sunday when we were out getting work done in the garden. I just get irritated when I’m stared at for hours on end. Of course I then end up taking it out on my husband when he’s not who I’m mad at all.

With any luck none of my neighbors will be out and I can get the watering done and be back inside within an hour and a half at the most!

Anyone else having a heat wave?






I can’t catch up with the garden work

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I’m so behind in my garden work. I think I’ll finally have the summer work finished when autumn hits.

As I’ve said before I just haven’t been feeling well enough to get into the garden daily, sometimes not even once a week. I almost don’t dare walk in the garden as I see all the work that needs to be done and if I’m not up to doing it, it tears at me.

On Sunday we got some work done in the garden. My husband was out weeding the front boulevard flowerbed and he put up these 1.5 foot by 1.5 foot bamboo type fence things in front of the flowerbed where it meets the sidewalk. It looks good.

Over the last two weeks in my two or so garden work visits I’ve managed to plant all the roses that I purchased in June, one honeysuckle – why did I buy two? I’ve already got a dropmore!, a hydrangea, and two clematis vines.

We had purchased three new passion flower vines. Those I did not plant. I kept them in the containers they came in and placed them where I could make the vines grow on an object (bird feeder pole) or fence. I have to bring the passion flower vines and other tropical plants indoors once it gets cool so there’s no point in planting them.

We still need to put down the composted soil that we recovered from our composter a couple of months ago, and we haven’t even put mulch down on the flowerbeds yet. See I’m behind.

Are you behind in your garden work too?

Butterfly Milkweed

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I noticed that my hybrid Butterfly Milkweed – Asclepias tuberosa – had started to form buds. I had noticed the developing buds about a week and a half ago as I took a walk in my garden checking on all the plants as I went.

Luckily I had my camera at hand and I was able to take a few nice photos of the developing buds:

Milkweed tuberosa buds

Butterfly weed is a herbaceous perennial that grows up to two feet in height. It dies back each winter and then re-sprouts in late spring from underground tubers.

Milkweed is slow to come up each spring. If you grow any form of milkweed you should always take care to mark the spot that it grows in each fall or at the very least try to remember where it was as it’s slow to make an appearance and you wouldn’t want to dig in the area and damage the plants roots.

Flower clusters of brilliant orange or red appear in midsummer. Once the blooms are spent attractive green pods develop. When the pods mature they open to release silky parachutes that drift away on autumn winds. This is how the butterfly weed propagates as the seeds of the butterfly weed are on these silky floating strands.

Each cluster has many flowers, several of these flowers will have an inner whorl of petals that are called the corolla and an outer whorl of sepals that is called the calyx. Butterfly Milkweed is a little different from other species of milkweed in that the sap is not milky nor are the leaves opposite.

Butterfly weed is a naturally occurring plant that grows east of the Rockies in North America. It’s preference is for well drained sandy soils.

If you’d like to grow these lovely flowers plant them in full sun to very light shade. Butterfly weed is hardy to USDA zones 4 – 10.

If you’d like to encourage butterflies to visit your garden this flower is a must as the caterpillars of Monarch butterflies feed only on milkweed foliage. Adult butterflies of many species enjoy sipping the nectar from the butterfly weeds blossoms.

I grow a few types of milkweed in my garden and every time I gaze out my kitchen window I see butterflies visiting many of my plants.

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