It sucks the life out of gardens and gardeners

Today I actually thought I was losing it. My impression of the last few days was that I hadn't watered a lot, and so I didn't bother to check the cistern before putting the sprinkler on my shade garden. As a result I almost burned out the pump because I let the water level get down to the dregs. This was the first time all summer I've made that mistake. I guess I'm pretty tired of it all, but I did call the Water Truck for a refill - again.

The picture above from Canada's Weather Network shows our 14-day trend forecast. You'll notice that it indicated rain for today. The day's done, as for the rain, well, you know the story: it didn't materialize. The rest of August looks equally dismal.

The title of this post comes from one of the kind comments I received from a blog reader in Washington. It's so true: drought will do that to you. I was interested to discover that mental health researchers in Australia have actually coined a word, solastalgia, for drought stress as it affects people.

PS: Here's a link to article about solastalgia as a human response to environmental stress by Glenn Albrecht, an Australian researcher in environmental health. It's a bit academic, but fascinating.

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?