Don't think of winter as death, but a rest before all the
new life next spring. Wow think how exciting it will be.
Norm

As much as I will miss the blooms, I am over the heat, so I am ready.

I get a bit wistful during the last of summer and autumn, but I don't get depressed til winter. Which is why I plant winter-blooming plants and the earliest crocusses I can find! :-)

Regina,

August has always been my least favorite month of all. It is a little depressing to me, but not for the same reasons as you. There are no holidays to get you off school or work and it is so hot you cannot enjoy being outside which is very important to me. The only good thing is that I can look forward to in August is cooler weather and autumn which I dearly love.

Katie

Regina,

When your tropical garden gets going real good, you will be looking forward to August, Sept & Oct. as that is the time for them to shine!

Oh and the kids go back to school...oh rejoice!

Rebecca

Regina,
You have to try the basil I have. It's called Bush Basil.
It is so big right now, it looks like a boxwood! The leaves are not as tiny as in the minuette, but not huge like sweet basil. I have been ripping the stuff off every day and giving it away, but it keeps getting bigger!!
Sissy

My shade garden stuff is doing quite well right now. My elephant ears are huge! The caladiums are getting big, too, and even bloomed. I had no idea those bloomed. My ferns are poking out there and there. They all share the same pots.
I splurged on a foliage begonia (Escargot) and I'm getting a lot more enjoyment from it than I though I would.
The back, where I make a stab at growing flowers, is hanging in there. The fuschia I've got in a hanging pot is still blooming. The impatients are doing extremely well.
I've been painting some old chairs and benches I picked up at auctions to give it some color back there. And I bought a fountain to set up.
So it will be a busy August.

I don't get depressed but I do understand what you are saying. It's just your biorhythms recognizing that they've "changed" directions.....

I'm always amused when people say they LOVE SUMMER---THE HOTTER THE BETTER. To me August is nearly the same as the last couple of weeks in January----too uncomfortable to be outside for extended periods---

double ditto to what havanacanna said----
All you need are a few tropicals or zone 7/8 plants that really do only get going when it gets the hottest. No matter how dried up many other things have gotten-- when my gingers started to bloom the first of August I got excited. I will enjoy their tropical fragrance and color until the frost takes whatever blooms I haven't already cut. The hummers will be so excited about a good meal before their long trek south, they won't even notice me staring at them.

Well I did get a little surprise today when I went out into the tropical garden. My brug bloom had faded and fallen off :-(

but the grocery-store ginger that I was sure was dead and had all but given up on decided to throw up a shoot!

And I did notice that my Tamarind seedlings seem to have really taken off this week. They have 14 compound leaves each, and each is developing a little "trunk" that is shedding the first layer (before they just looked like flimsy branches someone stuck haphazardly in the ground.) It's amazing the heat those little buggers can take, too - their soil temps must be 90 degrees in those black pots, but they are loving it.

Yes, the tropical garden is the only thing in the yard that is still happy, and it makes me happy.

The thing I look forward to this fall and winter is doing all my hardscape projects. That will hopefully carry me through until spring!

August just means that in a couple of weeks the Vols will be playing on Shields-Watkins Field in front of 109,000 of your best friends...how could anyone be depressed?!!!!!!
Actually it's just 23 days, 13 hours and 12 minutes away. ;-)

I feel a bit disgusted in August too. It's a little too hot for this transplanted Yankee and though I have managed to still have plants that are blooming all over the place, they all WILT bigtime everyday. So I have to water twice a day sometimes. My brug is holding up well, but the flowerheads on my Endless Summer hydrangea droop pretty badly. I call the "droopers" my drama queeens because they look like they are dead, but the minute the sun goes down or they get watered they leap to their feet like teenage cheerleaders at a football game. I have to say I am waiting for fall. My plan is to eventually have things growing right through the winter. That way I won't get that death thing bringing me down. Oh and the other GOOD thing is all the perennials are now on sale. Lowe's by East Town Mall had a ton of bargains this week.

I have to admit, today it is rough. 99* in my backyard with a pool temp of 90*. No fun.

Oh, but last night was great! One good thing about August is the meteor shower (which has nothing to do with gardening, but is still an outdoor thing). Isn't it usually in August? Last night we put a quilt and pillows on the ground and lay there beside our garden looking at the stars. We actually only saw 3 shooting stars, but it was nice and cool out last night, and we loved it.

Another nice outdoor thing to do is that there is also supposed to be a lifetime occurence of Mars being very close to the earth on August 27 this year. I've heard it should look as big as the moon, but I have a feeling someone is exaggerating. I plan on looking for that one also.

I had a lot of fun after work yesterday preparing some plants for the plant swap coming up. I planted a bunch of zigzag cactus cuttings and whatever that pink succulent is also, as well as some yellow blooming bush that my sister gave me (not forsythia). So even though the garden is mostly kaput, there are still some fun things in August.

Katie

It's not so much that tropicals tolerate heat, they need it and thrive on it.

Rizzir---I bought what was labeled as curcumin (sp) at Pope's in Maryville a couple of years ago. I have always suspected it was grocery store ginger but I always forget to plant until too late. If you gently stroke the leaves does it have a kind of herbal pepper smell??

I love Landrovers "drama queen" analogy... My potted salvia wilt only to bristle and drop a few leaves if they get a little too much moisture. For some plants, I think a little droop and heat stress is a good thing for some plants.

I have tried to plant for year round bloom with several things that bloom until frost. From then until Christmas it's the chrysanthemums and violas. In January even the violas look sad.....with that long cold month before my reticulata iris bloom along with the crocus....when there are only flower images in the form of catalogs and websites.

I had an aunt who worried about winter. When she was younger her worrying started with the first chilly breeze out of the north....even though that was in the middle of summer thunderstorm...and the chill was due to the fact she was sweating. "That feels like winter" or "cold weather is right around the corner", she would say.
The older she got, the earlier in the summer she would start voicing her worry about winter. We used to guess how early she would start talking about it THIS year....and pretty much every year, it got earlier.

It wasn't intentional, but she helped teach me to live and enjoy today....and not be concerned so much about tomorrow.

I'm REALLY trying to do my best to not end up like your aunt! I guess part of my problem is that I don't know much about fall and winter-blooming plants, and don't have hardly any of them. I have a couple of lenten roses, but I still haven't figured out where to plant them... I have mostly sun. OK, I have some shade in the back of the house, but I don't go back there all that often because our house is two-story back there. We're upstairs, and the tenants are on ground floor in the rear in our basement apartment. I like to give them privacy. So I guess I'm being selfish with my winter-bloomers because I want to put them where I can enjoy them. Do they dislike being moved around? Could I plant them in front in the fall, then dig them up in spring and move them to the shady back area?

I was thinking I'd try to find Chionodoxa bulbs so that I'd have other early bloomers. I've never tried mums or cabbages. I think I tried pansies once, but they didn't do so well. What else do you grow in the winter in full sun?

Regina,
I do know what you mean about August, especially with the awfully hot weather we've had this year. I almost miss those 10 degree days over last Christmas when I sat by the fire and thought about my future summer garden:) Although it's sad to see the plants end the season, I look forward to planning the next one.

It's also my birthday month, and I've had too many of those by far!

Despite my advanced yaers, I'm nervous abuot starting my junior year (yes) in college on the 29th. Books and papers will soon take my mind off the August blues:)

Regina -- I plant violas every fall -- they'll basically bloom all winter, and take you into spring as long as the weather stays cool. I like the small-flowered violas better than the large-flowered pansies, even though they can be harder to find in the nurseries. The violas seem to bloom better and come through the winter better. YMMV.

I also have a witch hazel, winter/spring blooming daphnes, and fall/winter blooming camellias. Also the earliest-blooming crocuses and daffodils I can find!

I don't like August either. Too much humidity, too much heat. Only good thing is watching the Royal Standard hostas bloom and waiting for the sweet autumn clematis to start at the end of the month. I noticed today that the first chelone bud was breaking, but really they won't start up until next month. And right after them come the anemones. And that's it until next year, but you know I don't like blooms in the fall. I like it when the garden shuts down for the season and leaves are falling. I do have a climbing aster on the fence that blooms in November of all times, but it is a soft enough color with falls ruins that I like it ok.
Well, this was a long-winded way to say that I know how you feel. Hang in there. The garden will speak to you in its time and lead you through the blues.

I'm depressed!! Every day the thundershowers make a wide berth around my house in Williamson County. They do north, south, east and west of us, but somehow they circle us and we get nothing. We have not had rain in 4 weeks!! I don't have time to every look at my plants to deadhead, check for weeds. It seems that all I do is water just to keep things from dying. It seems to be a tough summer over many parts of the US. At least, I am getting a good idea of just how tough some plants are. I have a neighbor who had several large trees planted in her yard in 2003 (at about $1500 per tree)and the all the leaves on the maples are withered and dry. She is afraid they have died. I am waiting to see if the leaves fall off or stay on the tree. I have heard that if the leaves fall off, then that is a good sign that the tree has gone dormant. If the leaves stay on, then the trees have probably died. Well, gotta' go water some more.

Trying to cheer ourselves up, we just prepared a very nice round bed from brick left over from building our house. I lined it with newspapers from my office on the bottom and on the sides, after killing the bermuda like Sissy taught us.

Since we can't grow anything hardly in our soil, we purchased 6 huge bags of that potting soil with fertilizer in it and I planted 6 beautiful red flowering mums around my white decorative birdhouse. Then hubby dug up the jasmine and we moved it to the center of the plot so it can wind up and around the post & birdhouse.

It looks so pretty! I hope we don't lose all the dirt when it rains, though I beginning think it doesn't rain here any more. Do you think the lining of newspapers on the bottom and sides will prevent the dirt from washing away?

I have also had 3 more flowers bloom in August. Some yellow cannas that I bought very cheaply have turned out to be that pretty orange & yellow streaky kind. :-) My sister gave me a pretty white Easter looking lily that is about 4 feet tall is blooming. Someone at the plant swap gave me some daylilies that they said were "blackberry" lilies. One has bloomed! It has purple & cream colored petals. And the yellow flowering bush that my sister gave me is actually blooming even though right now it looks like sticks in the ground. It is supposed to bloom in the spring!

Regina, all of that is pretty much helping me feel a little better during these dog days, but some rain would really help. Some photos are on my webshots photo page. I don't have time to post them here right now.

Katie

Katie the Blackberry Lilly is cool, I'd love to have a fan from it when you split it! The Canna looks good too.

After seeing those pics of me at the Swap, again,.... I'm wearing all black from now on!
I look like Alfred Hitchcock with hair, an orange shirt and shorts.
Geez can we all please agree to just not post any more pics of me on the Web!!!!!

Sounds like lots of us get depressed having to water and knowing that sometimes even that isn't enough to keep things going.

I have a nice smaller bloomed bright red hardy hisbiscus blooming well for its first time. It doesn't flop like the large blooms.

Ditto to Amazin dirt's suggestions. I have all of those.
I too prefer the violas over the pansies. They do much better for me than pansies and they are getting easier to find than a few years ago. I love that nice unexpected soft fragrance on a mild winter day.
I think the mistake people seem to make is planting them too early before the heat has dissipated and they get off to a rocky start.

If you are looking at those ornamental vegetables---one that doesn't look so much like a vegetable-- there is a red flat leaf kale that is gorgeous in the ground. I had seen it and thought it was a little leaf lettuce----in the ground with a little sun, it is a gorgeous unexpected bright red.

Chionodoxa---you've stumped me with that one. I checked a couple of catalogs and didn't find it. What do you know about it? I haven't checked Brent and Becky's bulbs online yet. They are the best bulb source I have found.

Chionodoxa is available from 'touchofnature.com'. Nice little flowers....

I guess I will be the first and probably only one to say it...

I enjoy summer. I enjoy being able to walk outside at any time day or not and not be cold. I enjoy the amazing jungle that is my backyard, which is only possible because of the very long, very warm, quite humid summers that the Delta and most of the rest of the South has.

My philosophy always has been and always will be: you are allowed to pick one extreme season of the year to complain about - and only one. What I really really can not stand is when people complain about the cold of winter and beg for warmth of summer, then as soon as summer comes, those same people are complaining about the heat and how much they would like to see winter come back as a "relief".

I have always disliked winter. There is very little about it that I find usefull. I am exclusively a tropical gardener. I rarely dabble with anything but tropicals unless it's a particularly interesting plant. So I rely on the 9 good months of Memphis warmth to make me happy. I do understand many plants need a rest period. That's alright. But it's just not the case with tropicals and many sub-tropicals.

So for my money- I complain heavily in winter and not at all in summer. Don't be a complainer on both sides of the fence. If you hate heat, gripe about it, but don't start up about the cold when winter comes around.

So I'll say it again :) - I enjoy summer! Enjoy the loads of color and greeness in front of you and to those who don't like heat- stay cool but remember that it is the heat that makes the plants grow. ;) And when you look at all those places in the north that have milder summers- just remember they pay for that dearly in winter!

LOL.

I pick winter! Heck, when my central air conditioning broke down about ten years ago, I never even bothered to have it fixed. I can deal with heat!

Same here, I love my hot southern summers and despise the cold (in which I grew up, in upstate New York.) I just lament the turn in August because I know the winter is coming. But thanks to my new tropicals (what would I have done without the ETN Swap?) I can continue to watch many things grow happily while the other things wind down - like my Valerian, which I think keeled over completely in that last hot dry spell. :-( I've got to come up with a microgarden that doesn't mind the crazy heat in late July and August near the edge of the driveway. So far I have a prickly pear...

I can't wait for August to be over because I really need to move EVERYTHING around in my front flowerbeds and I don't want it all to die!

I must confess what is probably the real reason I dislike late July and August... my silly silver maple drops all its leaves starting in the last week of July and continuing all through August, so it's as if it's late fall in MY yard and no one else's. I should take a picture so you can see my front walkway, absolutely buried in leaves. That's probably what caused me to start this thread in the first place. The SMELL of the dead leaves when I get in and out of my car, that distinctly fall smell, starts, for me, in July! I meant to get that tree cut down this year but then the finances got tight so we couldn't do it. Without that tree I think I will be able to fully enjoy our whole summer.

Yeah that leaf smell will get you headed towards fall prematurely.

I strongly dislike silver maples. I hated having them anywhere near the house because it seems like they are constantly dropping flowers or seeds or leaves or twigs and limbs.

A couple of years ago, I started cutting out the bradford pears and then a big tree on my neighbors property line. I was amazed what a difference it has made. It used to be dark inside the house. Now there is sunlight late in the day. The sunlit porch sometimes reaches 110 degrees. It is a great new place for tropicals.

I replaced those ugly leaf dropping trees with a small forest of crepe myrtles. They have that pretty bark in the winter... fragrant blooms from June to frost....and leaves...what leaves. They're so small they almost disappear.

Well I hate fall, and August usually has signs of fall, it is depressing, what you have kept alive thru the heat even starts to die and even the weeds are curling up. To me fall is a sign of death.I am sorry that this sounds so depressing, but this is how I feel.