The planting was all done in the circle garden. Two days, aching, sweating, dirty-dirty everywhere, both me and the house. But it was all over for the month.
Oh yeah, it's the end of the month already. OK, for next month too. Labor Day should be enough time for the next cycle of planting, and for these to settle in.
Of course I watered in all the new plantings. As exhausting as it was, I had a reason to finish up. Thunderstorms were expected, promising perhaps a full inch of rain. I wanted to ease my workload, and my water usage, by taking advantage of the weather.
Of course there are other consequences of thunderstorms. I was kinda hoping for lightning. Sure we heard a lot of thunder, and some strikes were close enough to count off the seconds and know they were about three blocks away... a mile away...two miles away. But nothing was worth a camera.
Not so the beginning of the storm. Here's a "before" photo, by about a week. Our "limelight hydrangeas" were starting to turn pink. Our next door neighbors have theirs all pink right now. Or whatever's left of course. I haven't gotten that far out yet.
Note how tall this one is. Plans for fall mandate severe pruning, in hopes it won't be scraping the house next summer. That little yellow stripe in the lower left corner is a pointy-bottom shovel. The window bottom is that high off the ground, and the screen is taking whatever abuse is dished out by the hydrangea.
When the storm started it was with a large prolonged burst of wind. We were in the family room, its window facing the street, although blocking most of that view is a limelight hydrangea, twin to the one on the side. We watched it thrashing back and forth, back and forth. With rain already falling, making the huge blossoms even heavier, it was a wild show. Since it kept raining, I wasn't about to take the camera out front for a shot, but decided to check the one on the side.
You can see it's dark by then. In addition, the blossoms are pinker as this was several days after the above shot. Notice the two birdhouses poking up from behind the bent branches? The hydrangea has grown so much that we haven't seen those since the chickadee family fledged from the top one, not being visible from any direction. I'm standing under the protection of our porch roof, using flash which is caught in the reflection from our neighbor's window across the street and back from their porch railing. As a quick note, the house blocked most of the wind from this one. And yet....
Since I was outside, I decided to check on how the storm was doing in soaking the circle garden and supporting my new plantings.
It looks like a pond, because right then and for over an hour later, it was a pond. Obviously, being raised, it does have good drainage. It just wasn't keeping up very well last night. You can see lots of daylily stubs poking up from the dirt. Many more are temporarily swamped. (I checked this morning and they're fine: high, dry, and thriving.)
The rocks on top of the wall were ones dug out of the garden when its soil got turned over. They are looking for their new home. The pile in the center covers a ground fault circuit interrupter. We're covering it over, having no earthly use of it - pun intended. Right now it's covered with rocks, some of which will remain when we later fill the low circle around it with daffodil bulbs and a few bags of soil. We just want to remind anybody that you cannot plant right there. Period. The path in/out which points at about 2:00 will also get more soil once the need to use it is over, and filled with September's other plantings, which are planned for spaces through the rest of the bed: iris, crocus, tulips, scilla, and violets.
I may have over-shopped.
If I decide I have, some of those will go into the other beds, like where a pair of very nasty thorny roses will be removed. I have this firm prejudice against things in my yard which can do more harm to me than I can do to them.
I will, as necessary, fight back.
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