Two to Four

We've had plenty of rain and don't need much more right now, but the remnants of an early season hurricane coming up the east coast will deliver a ton of rain tomorrow.

Predictions are for 2 to 4 inches for us. That's too much, but it's what is coming.

We finished spreading all the mulch (5 yards), so the pile is finally gone from the driveway, just in time before the rain comes. I ordered Envirocycle's pine mulch this time. It's a nice brown when wet, but kind of a flat light color when dry. It mats more than I would like, making a tight surface that keeps light rain out.

I don't think I'd get the pine mulch again. The spruce worked better, although I didn't like the dark, almost black, color.

Bounty

So much rain -- one and a half inches total overnight and this morning.

That's on top of what we got just a few days ago. Although they are predicting possible thunderstorms again later today, on the weather map it looks like the system has moved on.

The sun is out now and there is nothing more beautiful than wet, refreshed, clean washed greenery out there in the sunshine. Some things are battered down, but they will perk up.

And the bounty of strawberries continues each and every day.

A full bowl each morning, and more on the plants. They are so good.

Almost more than I can eat myself, since Jim doesn't eat them at all.

Rain, strawberries, sunshine . . .  all good.

Much Mulch

Hot and humid, in the 90s.

There was a breeze today, but it has been very hot and humid for several days. Jim and I are busy moving the 5 yards of mulch from Envirocycle. We work in the mornings, and are drenched by lunchtime, when we quit. After several days of work we still have about a yard or more to spread!

All the gardens are looking so spiffy with fresh mulch.

Check out that rich brown pine mulch laid down in the Drive By Garden.

In the center is the variegated sweetgum we moved. Hope it does ok. And on the right the spider shaped ninebark, blooming. It is still immature and a real arching shape right now.  On the left is the rosa glauca. Odd color. And it really needs pruning and shaping.

Up close the rosa glauca is interesting; from a distance it is an odd color.

From this angle the ninebark is not quite so spidery shaped!

The knockout rose Blushing Pink is spectacular by the front door.

Meadow's Edge looks good, with the bright yellow flowers of sedum kamtschaticum blooming.

And I love the pink pipecleaners!

Beverly Sill iris and the emerging blooming spikes of itea look interesting together. There would be so many peachy colored irises this year, but I cut a lot for a bouquet for Pam's birthday this week.

Black Barlow columbine and May Night purple salvia in the evening dusk. Rich.

Delicious

After such a cold Memorial Day weekend, thunderstorms brought rain and very hot, humid weather. Today is in the 90s and sticky. In the sun my weather station reads 99 degrees this afternoon.

This is what I had for lunch today:

Delicious. After so many years of disappointment with these 'Mara des Bois' strawberries, I am getting a bumper crop this year. Tons of them for days now, and loads of berries still ripening on the plants, and I am getting so many perfect, ripe, sweet berries that taste the way strawberries did in my youth.

I started these in 2009 in clay strawberry jars, and that didn't work out. I moved them to a long plastic container trough and they were too crowded. There were slugs, springs brought poor conditions for fruiting, they languished, I lost so many plants, divided others, planted them out in the garden by the hatchway, and then re-planted them along the gravel garden in 2011.

Finally, they were happy. In the gravel garden border they spread and sent out runners in 2012, and produced a few berries that the chipmunk ate. I got about a half dozen strawberries over the summer.

Now, in 2013 they are wondrous! The cool dry spring, then tons of rain right at fruit set, all seemed to work this year. The chipmunk is nowhere to be seen, and birds have not noticed the red temptations. What lush, vigorous plants (I am even ripping some out where they crowd other things).

And what scrumptious berries! I simply walk out into my garden, kneel down and pick a bowlful. Wow. Jim was impressed. Me too.

So Sweet

There is nothing so sweet as almost an inch of rain in the gauge in the morning. Thunderstorms brought  brief but heavy rain overnight.

There is nothing so sweet as going out into the wet garden to pick strawberries for breakfast. There are many more red berries on the plants needing just a day more to ripen. And lots and lots of immature fruits to ripen over the next weeks. Where is the chipmunk?

There is nothing so sweet as seeing brand new transplants well watered. I do not need to water anything, not the containers (they're too soaked now), or new seedlings, or things I moved. And the new, expensive, huge black gum that Bartlett planted yesterday got watered in well.

This tree is the companion to the black gum (Nyssa sylvatica) planted in front on the right three years ago. This new one is almost the same size (hence the price), but of course as a new transplant it is sparser and will take a little time to fill in and catch up.

But as it does, the two tupelos will make a pair -- a frame for the front of the house. And this new one behind the mailbox visually breaks up what was a small but very open expanse of lawn that looked too featureless smack in front of the garage wall.

Here is a terrible picture in bad lighting, but it gives an idea of how the two tupelos will frame the right side of the house -- the front porch and door -- rather than having the peaked garage face be the focus when you look at the house straight on.

Hard to tell with the new one being so sparse still, and I do think the one on the right is too far over. Oh well. That's the idea: two large gorgeous trees (especially in fall) with the opening between them showing the front door.

So sweet.

Sweetgum Move

Memorial Day weekend has been extreme. Lots of rain earlier in the week, then hot and humid, then on Sunday it got so cold, barely 50 degrees. Monday was abundantly sunny and beautiful, in the 70s, and today is iffy again, with more rain coming.

The magnolia Elizabeth that I wrote about 3 days ago now looks even worse.

So Jim got out the hand saw, and it came down rather easily today. Sniff. I will really miss that beauty. We just cut it off at the ground and left the small stump and roots in place.

The sweet gum was moved into the space, and the dwarf corylopsis that had been under the guest room window was moved in front of it. This is a better site for both plants.

The sweetgum doesn't seem so crowded as it did on the end of the Drive By Garden, so close to the quickly expanding Cornus mas.  And the corylopsis is out in the sun and not crowded by the fothergillas and the big miscanthus that are under the window. A better site for both.

When and if the sweetgum grows big enough to produce fruit, the gumballs will fall mainly in the bed (I hope) and not all over the lawn and driveway, although if it is big enough they'll fall everywhere.

Here's half of the length of the Drive By bed with all the spindly immature plants in it. The light colored sweetgum now has pride of place in the center. The tall narrow Cornus mas on the far right can spread out and anchor that end, with the two witch hazels filling in on its left.

The new little parrotia is on the left, next to the rosa glauca but hardly visible yet. I can't wait to see this whole garden strip in several years time.

Too Much

Okay, okay, I was dumb to complain so bitterly about rain missing us.

For the past two days it has rained off and on, and we now have another inch added to the inch and a half we got earlier.

2.5 inches of rain, total.

It went from being hot and humid a few days ago (we had the air conditioner on) to very cold (45 degrees, with the heat on all day).

Too wet and rainy now to enjoy the pretty white deutzias that have opened, and the irises. And the red Blaze peony which only lasts a few days, maybe a week at the most, is opening but dropping petals in the rain.

Sheesh. Now it is too much. But the system is finally moving on, the clouds are being blown about by cold wind, and things should start to dry out over the next few days.

The goatsbeard on the porch is blooming. I love how it has aged the pot.

Elizabeth Does Not Look Good

Overcast, cloudy, with more rain threatening. Unsettled weather and cooler, in the low 60s.

Magnolia 'Elizabeth' looks very bad. She bloomed earlier in spring, but is not leafing out well. Leaves are stunted, very small, and limp to the touch.

As a young tree she was shapely and had a huge, full canopy. This is what she looked like in early fall, 2011, before the October snowstorm tore off and twisted branches.

And here is what she looked like when first planted in 2010. The leaves were big and almost tropical looking even then. The skinny trunk did not look like it could hold up the foliage.

In 2013 she now looks to be in decline. First there was all the branch damage from the 2011 snowstorm. But in 2012 it looked like it was coming back, with new shoots, a lot of new growth and new branching. It started to fill in again and looked great.

Then there was antler rub in the winter of 2011-2012 that tore off some of the thin bark. But a callus had formed and was healing the wound.

However, I think the combination of branch damage and trunk damage was enough to cause the bark to crack. According to the research I've done, yellow flowered varieties are particularly susceptible to bark cracking, and it can be the result of winter sun, structural damage above, or to the roots.

This tree certainly had its share of damage above.

The crack is all the way up and down the slender stem.

There does not appear to be a callus forming at the edges of the crack -- it's just open.

So now Elizabeth is leafing out in a very pallid and stunted way. No big tropical leaves, no fullness at all.

I won't do anything yet. But I fear Elizabeth is not going to make it. I'll move the variegated sweetgum there if I end up having to remove this magnolia.

What a star she was going to be in my garden.

Never Mind

Ignore my post from yesterday ranting about the lack of rain when all around us got a good soaking.

Although it truly was weird to see the empty rain gauge after so much hype about storms rolling through for days.

But never mind. We got an inch and a half overnight. Good, wet, soaking water.  And it simply fell from the sky all over everything.

Amazing.

A Big Umbrella Over Us

We just got back from three days in Vermont for our anniversary. Lovely time at the Grafton Inn. It poured buckets of rain up there, with major thunderstorms rolling through over a couple days. Wow. It came down hard, a lot of rain in two separate storms. We drove home in rain, and were still getting pelted all through Massachusetts this morning.

The whole three days we were there the doppler map showed storm systems rolling through Connecticut too. I did not water anything before we left, knowing our area was forecast to get soaked.

The last rain we got was a quarter inch two weeks ago (well, 13 days ago) so I was relieved to know we'd get something at last, after such a dry spring.

But it didn't happen. Official records show more than half an inch fell at the airport, 8 miles away, but my yard got nothing. Not a lesser amount --- simply nothing.

The birdbath is down to scum after three days and the rain gauge doesn't have a drop in it.

After two weeks with no rain, and only a quarter inch before that, the first thing I need to do now that we are home is go out and water the new saplings. And I need to water the containers, which dried out over three days since I had expected them to get well soaked while we were away.

Today is cloudy and stormy and threatening, and doppler maps show bands of rain all moving over New England, except for over Hartford and Bloomfield.

Once again the impending rain on this map is actually moving north toward Albany and will miss us, just as all the other massive green blobs of rain did for three days. The green blob above in Massachusetts came through from the west, staying entirely to the north of us.

We're a tiny state. How hard would it be to get a rain storm to move a few miles over and deliver the rain that all the other states get from each storm coming through?

It's like there is a big umbrella plonked in the left upper corner of our state that shields us from absolutely any kind of precipitation, over and over. And even when the airport station gets some rain, another smaller umbrella shields us just a few miles away.

I noticed this dry bubble over north central Connecticut in other years, and I noticed we would be completely dry when the airport nearby got a good soaking, but thought it was just an anomaly or just me complaining over nothing.  It isn't. Our pocket of land just below Penwood forest and just under Talcott Mountain Ridge is truly in a defined rain shadow.