We do not judge. Mow baby mow!!!!!HA HA

confession time, I have done the same thing. I also have pulled up things I have planted because with the rain they have gotten out of control and I am tired of trimming!!

Haha...I knew I'd find some empathy :) I need to find an easier way to handle all this or take half of them out. When I caught myself contemplating hiring a backhoe to come remove everything and put it back to grass I knew I had better do something!

It is the same every August. Everything looks half dead and over grown and I wonder what was I thinking?

All of those grand winter time plans look a little crazy in August. What was I thinking, right? Next spring I am not going to plant anything, sound familiar? Then next January and all those catalogs and garden magazines start showing up and we forget what late summer was like. Then March comes around and we buy all those beautiful plants and plant all those seeds, again!!!

Who said gardeners were sane!!!

Like stockergal said, WEED WEED WEED MOW MOW MOW and we just had water dumped on us. Next week: WEED WEED WEED MOW MOW MOW

I just wish, my lawn mower hadn't died AGAIN!!!! Starting to hate this thing....

Our garden filled up with crabgrass this year, worse than ever, because of all the rain. We weeded it out of the still-in-use-beds, mowed it out of the empty beds and the paths between the beds and laid the grass clippings over the disappearing leaves we mulched the beds with earlier. They are all in-ground beds so mowing and weed eating is a snap. We are not as dry as you are yet since we got over 12 inches of rain in July and almost 5 inches of that fell on the 21st and 22nd. I never planted the fancy perillas available because I have so much of the wild kind and it is a pain.

When I posted the above message, I went out and found the source of chicken hysteria---a 6' long rat snake curled up in a nest box eating eggs. We turned him into Vulture Chow. Then I found the remains ( mostly just feathers and one wing) of a missing chicken, and narrowly missed stepping on the largest copperhead I've ever seen. We also had our third fire call of the day.

I am just completely over summer now and would like to stay inside for the rest of August. The snake issue is just ridiculous. They are everywhere. I had a chat with a possum in the yard last night and suggested he or she eat more snakes.

Lisa, It is the same with me every August too. It gets hot and snakey and I just let things go. I used to feel bad about letting the weeds get away from me, but I am over that. Once I am seeing as many snakes as I am seeing now, weeding becomes dangerous. I'd rather have weeds mixed in with my flowers than to be in the hospital with a venomous snakebite.

Stockergal, I totally agree! Winter dreams get us through the winter and spring planting keeps us so happy, but lurking deep in our gardening souls is the knowledge that July and August inevitably stomp our garden dreams flat!

Dorothy, I'm glad you got summertime rain. To me, it is so much more necessary than spring rain. We've only gone 3 weeks without rain but this place is a tinderbox. I am getting the feeling that August is going to be a rough month.

Dawn

Lisa, I counted as I pulled perilla a couple of weeks ago 100 plants....and I bet I have at least that many more. I let them lay out and dry and piled them over my spider lily bed to try to keep the bermuda down. I should pull some more today, since I watered my biggest flower bed this morning.

We got none of the last two days' rain, and I may be sorely tempted to mow at least one of my smaller flower beds. It's impossible to get the bermuda when our ground is this dry. It's thick in my lantana and I regret not digging them up when we got all the rain so I could more effectively get rid of the bermuda.

Carol

At the risk of having all of you boo and hiss at me (y'all know I don't like non-organic products), there is a herbicide product (synthetic, not organic) that kills grass in ornamental and edible beds. It is labeled for use with over 400 plants and can be used to kill grassy weeds growing around them. If you use it on any plant not listed on its label, though, it can cause plant damage. I haven't used it so cannot comment on its effectiveness, but the people I know who use these sort of over-the-top herbicides swear that they are effective and can help a gardener regain control in just the type of situation we're talking about here. Ornamec is an over-the-top herbicide, and Fertilome has one. I'll try and find it and link it below.

Fertilome's Over-The-Top Herbicide

I use Grass be Gone. It takes a while and sometimes a couple of applications. But in a crazy full bed, like an iris bed, it works wonders.