Dave, the easiest comfort for your losses is your unbreakable spirit. Weeds, oppressive heat and drought have bent but not broken it and thus while plant losses, especially cultivars as beautifully grown as yours, are tragic, they are but temporary. More importantly, it creates opportunity. Clearly you have selected more beauties to grow and I suspect your gardens will be all for the better by next June. My money's on it anyway, regardless of what mother nature has in store.

I have suffered losses as well, mostly due to my scale issue on some abies concolor but also some to moles. Though my cats catch dozens every month, they still make tunnels frequently underneath plants that I treasure.

I think also on the good-side of things is that you now have some pretty damn-hardened plants in your garden. Now you know they can almost certainly handle even the worst droughts and heat waves and in future months and years, you'll sleep and vacation well knowing your plants are one hell of a tough bunch.

It's amazing to me that these plants can tolerate this extreme weather at all. I furiously water my plants like the crazied-broom sticks in the first 'Fantasia' scene every time we get weather into the 90s. By contrast, your plants now consider temps in the 90s to be comfortably warm and laugh at this 'heat' we *suffer* through here in the PNW.

Keep us updated, your specimens and photos are *always* top-end, as I've said before your gardens are as close to the US has to a magical garden like Steven's 'Foxhollow'.

-Will

Agree with Will.

Nice mugo Dave!

Dax

I can empathize. I lost many plants this year. Of course, as Will pointed out, the upside is that I now have room to plant new and even more exciting things. Can't wait to see your pics next spring!

Regeneration. Consider it like after a fire in nature, how green the little shoots look against the black, just as your replacement stock is the new life pushing through. The chain unbroken.

*This card is also available blank for your own message of choice*

No one can possibly feel your pain as well as those of us in Texas that endured the HELL of this summer where we had 70 days of 100+ degree temps in Dallas. I have been fortunate to grow many things over the last seven years that most won't attempt further south than I-70 let alone I-40. Here I am in Dallas, north of I-30 growing picea, chamaecyparis, cupresses, juniperus, cedrus and pinus cultivars that "aren't supposed to live here." This was the year that proved all my nay-sayers right and allowed them to say "I told you so" the same way I told them last winter after 11" of snow killed their palm trees and banana plants (lol). My losses were high in numbers of plants and thousands of dollars-not to mention the water bills. So yes, this summer took its toll. My most depressing loss was a weeping white spruce, picea glauca pendula, that was about seven feet tall. But all the enjoyment I received over the last seven years was worth it and I will rebuild.
So what did survive? For those of you wondering what might be more heat tolerant!
picea pungens fat albert, hoopsii and baby blue eyes
all things juniper (except for scorching on juniperus horizontalis mother lode
all things cedrus
all things cupresses (except for scorching on leylandii golconda)
thuja occidentalis berkmans gold
abies pisapo (species from seedling stock-not a graft)
chamaecyparis obtusa (species) but with scorching (a few cultivars did make it with damage but are already flushing new growth now that it's cooled off.
chamaecyparis nootkatensis jubilee, green arrow and glauca

These all made it. My list of losses was so high it was easier to list what lived. The good news is that I have a nursery that orders material for me from Monrovia and Iseli so I have fresh hoopsi and moerheim on the way to replace the blue spruce that burned up. I have already picked up several internet orders from various sites and feel the depression lifting. Good luck to all of you who are replanting as well...
Don