Terry, i found that a lot of the perennials really liked last year's crappy summer. Many things bloomed for weeks on end and i had lilies right into September. Are you finding this? Anyone else?

We've been in the hot, dry end of things. We've had some rain in the past week but the ground is still like powder. The perennials are okay, but certainly not blooming their hearts out like last summer!

Hi Marciaz3 ... indeed most of my perennials have performed very nicely both this year and last! Just the season was cut rather short with the early September snows which had flattened many things! The lilies were really GOOD this season, though in '04 were very BADLY diseased! ... ugly ugly stuff! It's great that things ars so lush and full, just not much good weather to be enjoying the plantings! Oh, and I'm CONSTANTLY mowing GRASS and the MOSQUITOES we've endured! On the other hand, it's great not having to water anything!

Terry

Hey, you don't have to tell me about mosquitoes! LOL I must say we didn't have much grass-cutting to do this summer, though - i think i did it once at the beginning of July and then just last week!

IN the last two days it has been non-stop rain, periods of HEAVY downpours too. Tomorrow I will be spending probably all day cleaning the flood in the basement with the shopvac ;(

Right now I have the furnace on, fire wood is too wet to use, but on a happier note, I picked a good year to plant tree saplings ;)

Sharon

Terry- you must have been watching the same news as I was at about the same time yesterday, I was thinking the same thing as it was announced that Alberta..... had the best weather in Canada, then went into other news about the flooding in Europe.

The weather this summer has been, well, I am almost at the point where I don't know what to call it but not quite. Crappy is the word. In the last couple of weeks we've been waiting for a few decent days to go into the mountains and that simply hasn't happened. We have two school-aged boys and now the time is **** near out, in terms of time to go.
I'm not clutching at straws and wondering if we will have to try to go on the long weekend if the weather is better and wouldn't that be a joy. Everyone and their dog....and kids will be trying to go that weekend if the weather is good.
All I can say is it's a good thing we aren't planning on going swimming whenever we go.
I went off on a bit of a rant there.
It's true Sharon that for some tree seedlings etc., there couldn't have been a better year. Also, for moving plants at almost anytime this summer, it was good. I'm afraid I didn't take enough advantage of that. I could have moved quite a few things that I've been thinking just weren't in the right place. Not plants in full bloom, but a few smaller plants that I think would have transplanted well. Now that it's so rainy, I'm not in the mood!

We have the furnace turned on here too. Not that it has never happened before, but turning it on several days in a row in August is another thing.
I'm just glad we got our haying done before this latest downpour!

Faith

Hi all....finally back from vacation and I agree with everything you all have said here. I was worried that my garden would be all dried up and crispy when I got back...I never expected that stuff would be dead because of too much water!!

Stuff that was doing great right after I transplanted is brown and dead, some stuff though is doing great. My poppies are still blooming because they think it is still spring its so cool and damp. We got home Monday evening and it has been raining steady since then, and no reprieve in sight either.
I had Oriental lilies in bud just when I left and thought they would be done by now....they still haven't even bloomed yet I need to move them and it would be a good time to do it but I have to wait until they finish blooming....assuming that happens before the frost hits
Same thing with my tomatoes, they have hardly any fruit on them and what is there will most likely not ripen before the frost....a huge disappointment really.

I feel like I got totally ripped off this year as far as summer is concerned!

Aside from the excess rain in June and July, August has been fairly nice, dry though cool.

It seems like the entire summer has been two weeks of warm weather, followed by two weeks of cool, then back to warm.

They said on the radio last night, for Winnipeg overall it will be remembered as just an average summer. Some warmth, some cool, but wetter than normal then followed by dry. Much better than last summer, however.

I have a few red tomatoes and one pidly cucumber. My short season melons are the size of an egg, if that. My cucumbers have alot of blossoms, so I am hoping for some nice weather. I have sort of concluded that soil plays a huge part in it. My Mother has a "new" garden and got topsoil hauled in. It's much lighter and more organic matter than my hard clay soil. Her stuff, planted at roughly the same time, seems to be much more advanced. Her cantaloupe are larger, she's had loads of cucumbers.

The one thing I have had success with is the apples, they seem earlier this year, though smaller, probably because of the excess amount on the tree.

Glen

We have had a nice summer, actually too dry for my liking but it has rained a bit just recently when it is too late. We drove to Lloydminster and back today (really long drive) and wow, is it saturated up there. I hope it dries out and warms up for everyone. Some of my tomatoes are turning and we should have corn in a few days.

Welcome back Hunnerbun
I missed your garden reports from the north. We got almost 3 inches of rain in a thunderstorm yesterday. Chance of more rain tonight. Our Hort society just had their flower show this week. There was only 1 glad entered. No one had any in bloom. That's very unusual. Marie

Hubby and I shopvac'd 50 gallons of water from the basement last Friday, thank goodness there is no carpet down there, I also bleached the floors and the sides of the walls incase of mold, what a job that was. Now I hear its supposed to rain again this Tuesday!

Yeah, hunnerbun is back home, good to see you girl!

Sharon

Since I'm not far from you, I can commisserate! 95F today, barely 60F tomorrow! My potted tomatoes are either drowned or dry, with BER because of it, but the ones I do get are ripening- but the garden ones no ER but no ripening! I committed surgery and stripped over half their leaves-- that was a long job for 25 plants!

I don't have anything in bloom it seems, it makes me cry to see the pics some people post! I only have a few wildflowers and transplanted annuals in bloom.

As for the garden, it's brand new, so I'm doing OK there-I'm eating zuchini to my hearts content and I finallly have a couple pumpkins growing. My carrots and beets did wonderful and I got a long season out of lettuce- we had garden salad again last night(without tomatoes though!) Parsley and dill grow well for me. I'm just beginning to get cukes- was able to do a cuke and onion salad a few days ago- i got 3 whole slicers! My beans though are AWFUL! Peas dont know whether to brown or flower!

Oh well, at least I'm up north again and not sweltering in the desert, where I'd just be planting a fall crop with nothing having happened all summer (as in since march!)

Sharon, I can sympathize with you in having your basement flood. Hopefully it was just rain water, not sewage. We experienced that last year when our community had the so called 1 in 100 year rain event. Around 400 homes in the town had basement flooding due to the sewers being overwhelmed. We are still recovering in some ways. But I guess it's nothing compared to what the people in the southern U.S. are going through today.