A bit of garden art that I picked up at the
Mississippi Craft Center last week.
The summer solstice arrived without fanfare at 12:04 this morning, just after I had tucked myself into bed. So we can now officially say it is summer, even though it's been summer unofficially here since late May.
Today will be the longest day of the year at 14 hours, five minutes. The sun and I rose this morning at 6:22 and it will not set until 8:27 tonight. I'll be setting slightly later.
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I got up early to start my sprinklers. I've spent much of the week watering plants, trying to make up for their neglect over the previous week.
Texas sage normally sends out blooms in response to rain. There's been no rain, but there have been sprinklers and that has fooled the plant into thinking it has rained and so we have these pretty flowers.
Anisacanthus wrightii, flame acanthus, is sending out its flame-like blossoms.
Cape honeysuckle normally has its major bloom period in the fall, but this week it was sending out a few of these bright orange trumpet-shaped flowers that the hummingbirds love.
Native datura is basically a night-bloomer that attracts moths and sometimes bats as pollinators, but if you get up very early in the morning, as I did today, you can still find its lovely blossoms fully open.
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The long-term forecast gives us no hope of rain and continued temperatures in the mid-90s every day. I expect my sprinklers will continue to see a lot of use in the coming week.
Lovely flowers. I don't miss the summer heat in Houston. Our garage was covered with the Cape Honeysuckle vines, and we did have lots of hummingbirds visiting, but our cats got a few. That's probably when I started hating cats....
ReplyDeleteDo you grow vegetables in the summer or is spring and fall a better time? I would love to be able to grow okra, it loves heat and it doesn't get hot enough here.
My spring veggie garden was an almost total bust this year. Autumn is usually a better time for growing vegetables here, although some - like okra, as you note - do well in the summer. I'm contemplating trying some okra and cucumbers. Maybe some melons, too. But if so, I need to get them in the ground soon.
DeleteLooks like your garden fared well while you were gone. I have had to start to water this week too. It is amazing how the 90 degree temps can dry up things so quickly despite all the rain we got in the spring.
ReplyDeleteYep, no rain and 95 degrees will definitely dry things out!
DeleteI like your garden art and flame acanthus. Hope the forecasters are wrong and you do get some rain soon! We had an awful drought last year, it was no fun.
ReplyDeleteDrought is more or less our usual state in summer here, but some droughts are worse than others. So far, this is shaping up as one of those worse ones.
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