Under My Umbrella

It is true what they say about the weather. Don’t like it? It’ll change. First it was too hot, then it was too rainy.

 I have pot after pot of fickle petunias. Sun-loving, rain-hating petunias. A week’s worth of rain and even the hardiest of plants will start to look all sad and depressed but petunias take it a step further and look all slimy-nasty. With the wedding fast approaching (I refuse to look at my count-down calendar and tell you the exact number of days; it makes me get all hyper-ventilate-y) I don’t have any time to spare for any prima donna plant behavior. So I did what any seasoned gardener would do----I put my little darlings under shelter.

I broke out every patio umbrella I had and clustered my pots together under the shelter. Unfortunately, I had fewer umbrellas than I needed, but improvisation is the cousin of invention and I used patio tables to shelter more pots. Good thing the bottoms of the pots have that layer of recycling and are easy---relatively speaking---to move.

When the winds picked up it became a little challenging to keep the umbrellas in their stands---and by challenging I mean impossible. There came a point during the most recent storm that I decided that pounding rain would do less damage to plants than being smashed by an errant umbrella and I went out in the downpour to close up the umbrellas.

Thankfully the weather—or at least the wind—has calmed down some. We still aren’t seeing the week of sun we were promised, but that’s the way it goes with weather forecasting. Shane would always say that weather forecasting is the only place you can screw up 80% of the time and still keep your job...

Room and Board Not Included

With the backyard wedding fast approaching (under a month and a half---eep!) I’m up to my elbows in flowers. I have 92 white petunias from DeGoede’s, along with 128 white geraniums, 158 strawberry pink “Million Bells” (Calibrachoa) that have a darker pink “eye”, and 12 blush-colored ones who are veined with a darker pink, plus two terra cotta colored ones because they were pretty...

These flowers provide the bones of the color scheme and went well with the 128 rose pink geraniums that I bought the following week because DeGoede’s had an excellent sale and who could pass up such a smokin’ deal?

Variegated white alyssum

Along with a plethora of decorative grasses provide by a friend, there are all the filler/companion plants I purchased to round out the look; white euphorbia that looks like fireworks in a planter, white alyssum with beautiful variegated greenery, chartreuse potato vine for interest. Also a box full of African daisies in a variety of colors, snapdragons, Dusty Miller for a touch of silver, some petunias in contrasting shades of pink---and peach---and terra cotta ---and---let’s just say I have enough plants to fill my planters...including the three new (empty) hanging baskets I bought. Also the two I bought yesterday...

And yet, somehow, I find myself at every nursery in the county, buying yet more flowers. The wedding provides the world’s best justification. Oh look, a rose bush!

As I type this there may even be a couple of plants sitting in my car, waiting to be added to the new empty pots I might have also purchased...Does the Betty Ford Clinic have a program devoted to flower addiction I wonder?

And like all good addicts considering going cold turkey I’m looking for loopholes---would flower seeds count? Could I swear off plant purchases and just grow my own?

I’m Sue, and I’m addicted to flowers.

Hot Enough For Ya?

Seems you can’t go anywhere without the weather being the first topic of conversation, “Hot enough for ya?” people ask, and I reply that, yes, indeed, it is hot enough for me but it’s the humidity that is the difficult part and then the conversation generally devolves into me complaining about the weather, the fauna—especially the fauna with teeth and an appetite for wedding flowers---and the beauty of air conditioning. Which---and I truly believe this---is probably the greatest invention in the history of mankind.

Oh sure, some people will argue the virtues of air travel or the microchip, but I believe both of those things would be useless without air conditioning. Nobody in their right mind would climb on a multi-hour flight to (or from) Atlanta, Fort Worth, or even Portland without air conditioning to keep them sane.

 Computers don’t like heat either and prefer to be kept in a cool comfortable environment.  As a matter of fact computers function better when the temperature stays in the civilized range: 68*-74*.   (OK—that may or may not actually be a FACT, but for purposes of my story we’re going to treat it like one. At least I function better when the temperature is in that range.)

And forget about the marvels of modern medicine—air conditioning makes most of them possible—can’t have a bunch of crabby scientists sweating over a petri dish---going to get a lot of inaccurate results that way. And there are plenty of miracle cures that require a cool environment.

I suppose at this point somebody might suggest that I’m confusing air conditioning for refrigeration but I’m not ---after all, what is air conditioning but just another way to turn your house into a comfortably furnished walk-in refrigerator? In this heat, that’s the perfect place to stay.

Straw Flowers

Last year I drank the Kool-Aid and climbed aboard the Straw Bale Express. Straw Bale gardening suddenly seemed like something I couldn’t wait to try.

Of course--as is my norm--I DID wait to try it, and didn’t purchase my straw bales until Memorial Day Weekend last year. One of the perks of straw bale gardening is that you can plant your “garden” earlier in the season. Because the straw bales are decomposing they provide their own heat, and you can plant in a warm bale much earlier than you can plant in the cold ground.

Happy Sunflowers

That is, if you remember to buy your bales a head of time and condition them. Conditioning takes about two weeks to complete and then you’re free to plant. But, true to form I didn’t get around to starting back in April. Once more it’s Memorial Weekend and I find myself on the way to Overby’s to buy my bales. Lucky for me he had three bales left---it seems straw bale gardening is catching on. Who knew?

Because there is going to be a wedding in my back yard I won’t be planting my straw bale vegetable garden. Instead, I’m experimenting a little and using the bales to grow flowers. And not just any flowers---giant Sunflowers. Statement Sunflowers, if you will.

Or if the ELK will. Leave them alone that is. The bales will be outside of my new fence—technically the fence is so new it’s not even constructed yet but I have faith—and that will make them subject to the appetite of ravenous elk. I plan to douse the bales and flowers at regular intervals with the Stinky Spay and set up a perimeter of Scarecrow sprinklers and hope for the best. Cross your fingers!