We had a cold, dry winter, followed by a cold, dry spring, and now a very dry summer, so far, that has been a degree or two cooler than normal. Perhaps the slightly cooler spring/summer temperatures have been the saving grace to offset the extremely dry conditions. Whatever the reason is, the backyard garden is a jungle at the moment! The front garden is a bit of a mess as it is struggling badly in full sun and very dry conditions. Today is very hot and humid (29C/85F with humidex 33C/92F) - too hot to work out front but we've been doing some hand-watering in the shady backyard (still too hot in the shade to stay out there very long....!) I took these pictures yesterday - they don't capture the look and feel of the jungle as well as I hoped though.... If we had coyotes lurking in the backyard, as long as they stayed off the lawn, we'd never see them! The dogs disappear as soon as they leave the lawn (we're dog-sitting two other dogs this week so there are three at the moment.)

Behind the wall of plants behind the path around the lawn, the area under the pines is pretty barren.

The Martagon lily is just out of the picture where those geraniums are on the bottom left side. It's in full bloom now.

It's always dry under the pines because it takes a heavy rain to penetrate the pine tree canopy. Sweet Woodruff and some Wild Ginger used to carpet the ground under there, but much of it was killed in the winter of 2013/2014 when rain and snowmelt collected under there and then froze for several weeks. A few patches have started to make a comeback as you can see in the picture below, but it'll be years before it cover the ground the way it used to.

(Inky is trying to get Cole to play with her.... They're good buddies but Cole prefers to play with people!)

The 'wet corner' on the other side of the shed is a very dry corner at the moment and things are definitely starting to struggle there! We moved a 2-year-old Empress Wu hosta to the area beside the shed where we removed the dying pussy willow last fall. That area is quite sunny now so we've been watering that hosta. It's a long way from a hose so we haven't watered anything else there.

(The shed is 10' wide but only 8' deep - we kept it to the same footprint as the previous shed so the property survey didn't need to be changed!)

The other area that is showing drought stress is the north alley where the astilboides are - those big leaves NEED water so we finally gave them some this afternoon.

There is no rain in the forecast for the next 7 days other than a 40% change of showers - not rain! - on Friday. 40% usually equals 0%! The jungle is soon going to be a very limp and wilted one :-(