The garden is tired.
Even though there has been rain in our part of Arkansas during July and August, we've gotten very little of it. We are in a location where the clouds often seem to "split," bringing rain to our south or to our east, but dropping just a few sprinkles on us. Temperatures have been in the mid- to upper-90s for almost the entire time. The sun beats down day after day after day, literally baking everything. The dirt is dry and hard, even under the straw mulch.
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| Emerald Giant bell pepper plant suffering in the hot dry conditions. |
But in this heat, it doesn't seem to matter how much you try to water things. I almost emptied a 55 gallon rain barrel one evening putting water on the bell pepper plants trying to save them. After another day in the heat, I could hardly tell I had watered them at all.
I've hooked up the garden hose to the "city water," and tried soaking the ground around the plants that are still producing. I can't help but feel guilty watering that way. It seems a real shame to take potable water and just empty it onto the ground.
And the hard truth is you just can't water everything.
As I told my sister one day, you just have to pick and choose what you're want to try to save. And even then, the plants you try to keep watered might live, and they might not.
As I sit here typing up this post, I'm watching The Weather Channel coverage of hurricane Ida as it moves inland in Louisiana. It's hard to even comprehend how much water will fall from that storm, and it's really sad that so many people are at risk of losing their homes and possibly even their lives. At the same time the people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are going to see up to two feet of rain, there are people in the western United States who are fleeing uncontrolled wildfires, desperate for just a little rain to slow the fires.
So even though it's been a hot dry summer for us, I can count us in with the fortunate ones who are only a little inconvenienced by the weather. The peppers may not make it through the summer, but hopefully I'll be around to try again next year.
A cool gust of air just came in through the open window and I hear thunder to our north. Maybe Ida is bringing us some rain too.
The calendar tells me that summer is coming to an end.
Fall will come, bringing with it cooler temperatures and (normally) more rain. I think I'm ready for the change in season. Maybe I won't feel quite so cranky.
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| Climate.gov precipitation outlook for September shows that we should be slightly wetter than normal. Image courtesy of https://www.climate.gov/maps-data/data-snapshots/start. |