At a week into July we are in full summer, and have been for a while. The season has been kind so far: the high temperatures haven't gone over the mid-nineties, and nights are still mild enough that I welcome a light blanket toward morning. We had hardly any rain in June; recently there came a couple of drippy days with a shower or two, but not enough water fell to do anything about the drought-born cracks in the ground. It's humid. Mercifully, chiggers, of which we have some kind of Italian version, and ticks have hardly made themselves noticed so far: some years they're bad.
The spring rose flowering got cut short with a spell of hot weather, back in early June I believe, that crisped the blooms of such varieties as 'William Lobb', in full flower at the time. As usual by this time of year there's not a lot happening rose-wise. The warm climate roses made new growth after their first flowering and now have a scattering of bloom: 'Jaune Desprez', 'Crepuscule', 'Mme. Alfred Carriere', 'Mrs. B.R. Cant', and 'Archduke Joseph'. 'Mme. Antoine Mari' made abundant new growth and is now trying to be a Polyantha, with a load of small, semi-double flowers, quite pink, very different from the opulently large, double, lipstick-edged whipped-cream blooms it's capable of in favorable mild weather in May. MAM may have some kind of disease or infestation. Her canes show a kind of warty spottiness and age more quickly than I expect from a Tea; however, if infestation it is, she stays ahead of it. I cut out old growth and, though the lady's figure, quite awkward, leaves a good deal to be desired, she certainly does grow and flower. R. moschata continues to put out a sprinkling of milk-white flowers. The plant, caged, after eleven or twelve years in the ground is up to eight or ten feet or so, very stout, very handsome. The gray-green leaves and white blooms make a welcome cool effect in the heat, in alliance with catmint (now getting shaded out) at its feet, and blue-flowered agapanthus and cream-yellow variegated persicaria around the corner--I forgot the Confederate jasmine, as it's called in Florida, Trachylospermum jasminoides, trellised up the wall--growing under a rose pergola. None of these plants gets any extra water, or fertilizer for that matter.
The house is three stories of masonry and is perched on a steeply dropping, south-facing hillside (though at least we have woods immediately below the yard), so we get a lot of sun. Shade is important in the summer. There is the wisteria on the pergola in front of the house, which I allow to riot all summer long before cutting it back in winter, and the persimmon which gets a little bigger every year; in the modest yard, once the courtyard of the farm this was, grows a jungle of roses, phlomis, sarcococca, pittosporum, myrtle, Salvia guaranitica, and the cluster of three Trachycarpus fortunei palms now getting up to respectable tree size; just beyond are a pruned bay laurel, more roses on pergolas, and a black locust and elderberry, the latter of which I usually prune back annually, but didn't this year because I thought we'd need the shade. I used to have the clothesline in this part of the yard, but it got so hot I moved the line to the paved terrace of the second house and replaced it with two laburnums and a Viburnum x burkwoodii. They'll take a few years to get big enough to give shade, but seeing them is a comfort even now.
We've also been busy these last few years with the paved terrace of the second (unoccupied) house. It was just too much heat sink, as I felt particularly after the tryingly hot summer of 2017, good for drying clothes but not for much else. So we built a pergola around the perimeter of the terrace and hauled the roses growing at the foot of the terrace wall up onto it. They liked that. I stopped cutting back the flowering ash that had seeded itself into the top of the terrace wall, and it immediately shot up into a two trunked tree and began cracking open the wall. We planted a semi-columnar oak on the inside of the pergola: it did well. Then last year we opened a bed, starting at the columnar oak. in the paved terrace along the inside of the pergola, ending in another wider opening for a second columnar oak. This one, planted last winter, is truly columnar, and doesn't like its spot, which I suspect has far too alkaline a ph for it, so we're dosing it with fertilizer for acidophile plants and crossing our fingers (the tree was expensive). The bed between the two oaks we planted last year with a miscellany of artichokes, pinks and thyme from seed, golden oregano and yellow-variegated lemon thyme, plus all the weeds that invited themselves in, while outside the bed proper I stuck bits of wild thyme in the cracks between the paving stones and scattered seeds from mullein, a plant I love, which sprouted. Once the weather warmed we hauled out as many of the succulents in pots as there was room for along the terrace bed, and now the whole is a lively handsome sight.
I've been doing cleanup in other parts of the property, behind as always, but that's a story for another day.
Sheila z8a Rogue Valley OR
bart bart
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