This Has Not Been A Summer For Gardeners
So, it’s raining here . . . again. It seems pretty much to be the rule this summer that it’s going to rain almost every other day. In fact, now when my wife checks the weather report, I ask her ‘So when are we expected to see the sun again?’. I haven’t bothered checking the meteorological reports, but it won’t be surprising if they declare this summer to be one of the wettest ever on record. In fact, it occurred to me this morning that we’re near the end of summer and I haven’t once used the sprinkler to water the lawn. Naturally, this weather has the obvious downsides of reducing the number of days I can pull out the BBQ or that we can head out to the beach or attend one of the outdoor events around the city. But it’s also impacting me on another front – that as a gardener.
Oh sure, I know what most of you are thinking – what’s that? A gardener complaining about rain? Well, under normal conditions I wouldn’t since like most gardeners, I plan my work around the rain forecasts as some gardening tasks actually benefit from being done just before it rains or just after. But this summer, we’ve had more rainy days than sunny ones and the impact on certain sections of my garden has been noticeable – both for the better and for the worse.
The most obvious one would probably be my lawn, which has never looked better than it has this year. Well, I should clarify that – my lawn in the backyard has never looked better. My front lawn . . . well, there’s a lot of work to be done there. But my lawn in the backyard has truly reaped the benefits of all this rain, looking now like those lawns you see proudly displayed on one of those lawn fertilizer bags. However, I’m also out there more often with the lawn mower trying to keep the stuff from growing out of control. My wife once mocked me saying that I was becoming obsessed with my ‘manicured lawn’ – that is until she tried walking through the grasslands of the Serengeti that had taken hold off our back deck. I must say as much as I enjoy mowing the lawn, having to make two passes with the mower takes some of the fun out of it.
Unfortunately, grass isn’t the only thing that’s growing in spades in my lawn thanks to all this rain. On my front lawn, what was once a few scraggly weeds has since bloomed into a thriving community of nutrient-gobbling freeloaders, making large sections of the lawn complete write-offs that will have to dug up and re-sodded. And yes, that is as much fun as it sounds.
Of course, the lawn isn’t the only part of my garden showing an impact from all this rain. Last year at this time, my rose garden was in full bloom, with many canes reaching an average of five feet in height. Not only we were able to enjoy rose blooms the size of my palm, but they released fragrances that were almost hard to believe were real. This summer, on the other hand, has seen only a handful of blooms, and very paltry ones at that, on canes barely reaching three feet. Sure, roses by their nature are thirsty plants and one would think they’d reap the benefit of all this rain. But they also need plenty of sunshine, something that has been in rather short supply this summer. It also isn’t helping things that the rain comes in downpours throughout the day as it washes away all the rose food I fed the plant a day or two before. It’s like nature’s version of watching your money go down the drain.
Without question, it’s been a frustrating summer for gardening, if not a taxing one as most gardening opportunities end up being like a triathlon event, where I try to squeeze several days worth of gardening into those few hours where the sun shines long enough to get some work done outside. Sometimes, though, those sunny days took too long to come and so, I’d be out there in the rain working on the garden, drawing either the solemn support of fellow gardeners or the astonishment of passersby wondering how crazed I must be to be pulling out weeds in the middle of a downpour. But that’s the price you pay for being a gardener I suppose. After all, as the saying goes ‘A real gardener doesn’t have a green thumb. They have dirty knees instead.’
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