Broken records


I thought long and hard about whether or not to show you these pictures.  But so many of you got the mistaken impression that some of the images I've shown in the last couple of posts were in 'real time', giving you the false  impression that MY landscape and gardens had magically escaped the destruction of this heat and drought.  

Well, my darlings, it has most assuredly NOT dodged any bullets and here are the sad images to prove it.  As I write this on another sweltering afternoon, it is 107 in the potager, mercury rising, with a forecast of similar temperatures ahead.

As I told you yesterday, the yews and most evergreens have been particularly hard hit.  I am losing (most likely) about six fifteen-year-old yews.
The large terracotta here represents one of two topiaried yews I have been tending for over a dozen years.  I finally discarded them...too depressing. 
Lime mound spirea has really suffered, as has ANY south-facing plant...here it is the spirea and Boston Ivy climbing the wall. 
This is a five year old 'Wine and Roses" weigela in an unirrigated bed.  I've put a slow drip hose on it and it seems to be making a comeback. 
My biggest heartbreak.  I have cultivated this boxwood in the potager for almost twenty years.  This is an unirrigated area that I have always hand watered.  This year, no amount of water can relieve it of its misery.  Most plantings in the compartments I have already removed.  Simply too hot. 
 A close up.
A dying expanse of mondo grass growing between stepping stones.  It has been there forever.  :( 
I finally pulled out most of the contents of my window boxes.  The dwarf Alberta Spruces simply couldn't take it this year.
Dead twenty-year old azaleas.
 And more.  











Oops!  Forgot to rotate this one.  I am so much more careful with the the pretty images...



 I fear I will lose the whole thing before this heat dome weakens.

Showing you these pictures is an act of love, I assure you.  These images were very hard to take, and even harder to show you. Not to depress you or deflate your already bruised gardening spirits.  But to let you know, that ALL of us are experiencing it here in Oklahoma.




So don't beat yourselves up if things look horrid.  In all likelihood, no amount of water, or shade or shade cloth or mulching or wand-waving would have made any difference.  

But, my dears, the days are getting shorter....and even if the drought continues,
at least we know cooler days lie ahead.


And once again, in a season of broken heat and drought records, we will, like the proverbial broken record




because we are gardeners, and we must




start all over again.

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