The drought ruins a few plantings

                                                 —but not all                                                    

by Pat Laster                                                                               

           The first cooler days of August last week—and the rain, plus a dose of nutrients––prompted a rejuvenation in part of the flora that surrounds Couchwood Manor. Showing WHITE were abelia blooms, an airplane plant blossom and, against maroon foliage, shamrock flowers.

            Different shades and hues of PINK turned up in a few Encore azalea blossoms, the long-blooming crape myrtle, oxalis, and Mom’s old hanging begonia.
           
             BLUE wandering jew, PURPLE monkey-grass blooms and beautyberries, FUCHIA dianthus, YELLOW lantana and lance-leaf coreopsis completed the rainbow of colors.

            Wait! I forgot the various colors of the rose moss/moss rose/portulaca. [See picture: disclaimer: not mine, but similar.]

             Also a community of white tent-capped toadstools sprang up in the lower south yard.
           
               Not everything in this hilltop acre survived the drought. It was easy to water the front and porch plants, but not so much the back where cannas are still green but have not bloomed. Oxalis and monkey grass planted around the yellow ash stump pretty well went dormant/brown or the foliage disappeared, leaving bulbs stacked like miniature minarets.

             For the second year running, two property-edged plants on the west died of thirst. Only one branch of a variegated privet survived. The neatnik neighbors will like that: they can encroach farther into my yard with their mower. Suits me: less for me to mow.

              Grandmother’s rock garden/our pet cemetery under a three-tree sassafras grove, is way out of reach of a hose. Earlier, optimistically, I planted lamb’s ear, a coreopsis, oxalis and tansy to the already- growing, single stalk of pink chrysanthemum and an ancient stand of day lilies.

              I carried water from the rain barrel (a number ten washtub) at the northwest corner of the house. Eventually, with no rain, I also let that bed go. Only the lilies and the mum stalk still show green. And a community of wild asters. All the leaves of the volunteer dogwood sapling are half ECRU. (Ecru—now there’s another color to add to the ones above!)

           The pear tree is so loaded that on one branch each pear touches another all the way down (or up; I took a picture for proof [for later]. This tree does its thing without benefit of pruning—except what nature does––or spraying. One fellow stopped by earlier in the month to see if I were going to “do anything” with the pears. If not, could he have them for preserves. I assured him I was.

          “You can have what’s already fallen,” I said, but he didn’t take me up on that. My disabled-vet cousin will likely be by again (I don’t see him until pear season) to get “a few for his wife.” He fills a five-gallon bucket!

         I’ve sometimes thought of adding a faucet on the north side, but since I can’t keep the ‘mum bed on the south alive and blooming, why add to my responsibilities?  P. Allen Smith I’m not!!

         Speaking of the south mum-and-lily bed, it is the worst-kept rectangle of them all. Located under the breakfast room windows, and close to the only outside faucet, it is built up a foot high with rock-and-mortar—Dad’s doing, I suppose. What it needs is a complete dig-out. Which may happen after I finish the kitchen painting project.

           Always plant for color, Janet Carson says, but isn’t GREEN a color?

c 2012 by Pat Laster dba lovepat press