Hanging in there through dry August

It's record dry, but the beds look as colorful as ever. The picture here is of a bed we call the "well bed" (because that's where the house well sits, not far from the blue spruce at the left). Now, I've been watering this bed every week or two. It's the bed that gets watered from the pond with the firehose.

Past the well bed, there's a dip in the land in which lies the pond. The pond is now quite low, maybe down five feet (1.5 meters), but because it's 12 feet deep (3.65 meters) it still has a lot of water in it.

Beyond that in the distance is a bed that I've given up maintaining. It's full of grasses and native perennials like Rudbeckia subtomentosa, a nice tall black-eyed Susan. This bed now has many weeds creeping in, but all we do is mow around it. (Our ambitions proved unsustainable.)

Amazingly, this bed is full of life and color, record drought not withstanding. Meanwhile, in our two acres of meadow, the plants are quite stunted, about half their usual height due to the extreme dryness. However, they are still blooming, but not staying in bloom as long as usual.

Below is Agriculture Canada's drought map to Aug. 14. As you can see, the red area marking record dry conditions keeps expanding.

Precipitation Compared to Historical Distribution (Ontario)

A little rain again

Today's rain was just 2/10ths of an inch. But maybe things will start looking up: at least there are some more showers in the forecast for the coming week.
Here's a recent picture of the four-square garden, which I've been watering faithfully. The lavender is in bloom and its scent is divine. But you can see how dry it is in the tree farm field behind my garden.

I haven't done a post on it yet, but the wonderful limestone sundial base in the picture was actually carved from three blocks of stone by my husband, John. It took him a couple of carving workshops (one in England and one in Vermont) and two years to complete. It is utterly wonderful. I'll write more about it soon.

Not a drop: June is determined to be driest ever

So that big cold front, the one that prompted severe thunderstorm watches all yesterday afternoon, what did it yield? Nothing, not a drop!

Zero POP in the forecast for the next three days, so this will remain the June in which we got less than an inch of rain.

And at the door, the hot, dry months of July and August. Yikes. I'm not liking this summer at all. I'm already counting the days to September, and sweet relief.

Dry, dry, dry...no rain in the forecast

Yep, we've got drought stress. We're almost into the middle of the month, and the only rain we had so far - a thunderstorm last Friday with winds so intense that a neighbor's weeping willows have major limbs ripped off - was a measly 3/10ths of an inch. (We were lucky with our willow: the arborists thinned it out that very morning, so only smaller branches came down.)

This dry June follows a parched spring that lasted from the latter half of April all the way through May.

I ordered my first truckload of water today after watering so much that I drained the cistern down to the last foot of rain water. The next couple of days will be spent watering all the plants that are in the driest spots.

At least, I feel I'm doing something for the plants and garden. Anyway, I'm not in despair yet, but if it stays this dry all summer I'll be questioning why I bother gardening at all - again. Without rain, there seems to be little point to all this effort.

Anyway, why worry?