Melissa, I have to admire you for being able to even care about your garden at this time of year! Physically, I AM caring: I am trying to water once a week, which is an exhausting,extremely onerous job,since I have to bring in the water myself.I'm also working on automatic watering systems,which is an awful job; I am having trouble with leaks at the joints;since my recycled water tanks have unconventional "faucets" I have to use a lot of teflon, silicone, etc. in the attempt to limit leakage Also, the fact that I'm a beginner meant that I had to assemble the things "out on the field"-very, very trying and stressful,and for this reason not very well done. But I wanted to take the plunge: I think these might be of some help in the future, since I'm seeing that plants are taking longer to establish than they did before, due to extreme heat and scarsity of rain. So my dream is to have three areas of 2nd/3rd-year plants which will be given water with these systems to help them along until maturity,so I'll only have to hand-water new implants and ones that seem to need a bit of coddling. These systems are temporary; once I learn enough I plan to replace them with sturdier versions.

However, I don't enjoy this in the least; I can see why I put off trying this for so long!!!!!

The garden is hot and buggy,much of it over-run with weeds,but of course it's too unpleasent outdoors to be able to do anything about it. I hope that next year DH will have a little spare time to come out and mow at least once,but even there, before he does, I must make sure that there's nothing over which one might trip whilst wielding a weed-wacker hidden in the weeds, and that's a fall/winter job. I find summer to be so long, so tedious, and since both myself and DH have had a very hard past year, both of us are chronically tired. It's also painful to find myself dreading the days when I'm scheduled to go out there- I can't be well at my beloved land! I hate that. And there's still a month or more to go...

You're so right about the trees. In the autumn I plan to put out several more,even digging up established roses that are in strategic places and replacing them with fast-growing trees and wisteria-on-structures that will provide shade for other roses and myself.

Anyway, sorry about all the negativity and complaining. I hope you are feeling better and will get well again soon.

Goodness, bart, what a nice comment. I know summer is hard, for everyone, but you've been out and working in it, as well as having to drive back and forth from your home. It sounds really tiring, and the work on the irrigation system exasperating as well. I hope you see the rewards of your efforts, and also that fall comes soon for you.

I care about my garden, but I can't say that lately I've been caring for my garden. Too tired, and so it has to look after itself (not a great idea), aside from rare light activity on my part. DH has been mowing recently, and I'm sure it was needed, though I haven't even been down to the big garden for weeks, and probably won't go down until the weather is cooler. At that point I might be able, after going down, to face the steep walk back up. But not in the heat.

I wish you luck with your trees this fall: they are so important. There's so much to do here that I'm not sure where to start, though planting trees certainly is a Good Thing. But first I have to get some energy. I'm hoping that exams this week may give my doctor some idea of what's going on to cause all this long term fatigue.

O, I hope so. too. Melissa. Post-Covid fatigue IS a real thing,I think; both myself and my DH tire more easily than before, and sure, age plays a part, but then I hear from my energetic cousin that since she had covid, she now has to take a nap in the afternoon, which she never did before. Also our new cleaning lady, who is a good deal younger, says that she experiences the same thing. BUT there is a limit- when DH and I went on our trip to Andalusia last March,we were both pretty darn peppy,considering, so some of said fatigue is/was obviously due to stress from work, etc. It's much better that you get it get it checked out.

Yeah, I want to focus on doing trees and evergreen shrubs-my garden needs them aesthetically and practically. Laurel seems to pop up a bit everywhere, so come fall I'll dig those babies up and add to my already respectable collection of young laurels. I'm thinking about doing some hedges, maybe, to add structure, but it's hard to decide where exactly one would fit in, aside from the obvious idea of planting a laurel hedge all around the perimeter of the fenced-off garden. That needs some thought: the brambles try hard to invade on one side (and are succeeding now that it's too hot and I'm too busy watering to continue cutting them down) .

I'm going to be a trifle of a wet blanket and remind you that laurel gets BIG and is a job to control. There: I've said it and it's done. Hedges are like that: it's really difficult to find suitable plants. Box was excellent, and then box moth came along. I'm currently wondering about myrtle. Photinia as part of a mixed hedge rather suits me, but I know you don't like it. Privet, native or exotic? Well....anyway. You'll figure it out. I think it's interesting that you, too, are focusing on structure, which has been a primary consideration of mine for some years now, as opposed to collecting plants like roses, peonies, lilacs.

Thanks for the good wishes: they're very welcome! I hope the best for us all.

But Melissa, it's fine by me if the laurels get really big! Think of pruning them-all that great,weed-seed-free organic matter/ mulch!!! No thorns either! It's PERFECT, lol!

Please do not read my post as being smug in any way...and I really appreciate the horrendous difficulties of gardening in europe at the moment. Apols for dodgy 'T' on my keyboard too,. I had to make a few hard decisions because I was struggling to maintain my various gardens and realised I was holding onto some unrealistic expectations and just becoming discouraged. So much so, I actually considered giving up the allotment last year until I visited a few 'waterwise' gardens such as the RHS Harlow Carr and revisited Beth Chatto's totally dry garden.

I dunno whether it is brave or foolhardy, to persist with growing the plants you love in the face of intractable conditions. It's not a path I have chosen though because I am naturally idle and inconsistent (and self-critical to the point of paralysis). I am in the process of turning my entire allotment into a dry garden, bed by bed,...and doing most of it from seed or cuttings. Along with drought and lean soil, a hosepipe ban and water cut-offs were the last straw so I have simply been on a campaign to amass lavender, succulent, silver-leaved plants, deep rooted forbs, geophytes. Sowing eryngiums, antennaria, penstemons asphodels, verbascum, grasses, hardy shrubs such as salvia jamensis and prostrate rosemary, tiny centaureas,.an absolute list. Although I am watering in newly planted things, by the end of the next coupla years, the whole garden will be totally unirrigated. (despite being in the driest part of the UK, on the thinnest soil imaginable (alhough the 'meadow' has been a patchy experiment to say the least).

I am not young and see no reason to fight against the prevailing current...but best of all, the dry beds I have so far planted look bloody lovely. I started this big changeover last year after the hideous drought and heatwaves left the allotment sere and dead. I can't believe I struggled to grow unsuitable plants for all these years ...not to mention the fruit and vegetables which were exhausting, needing continual watering and protection, when the solution was right under my feet. Still have roses too...just not so many because I needed an open, sunny and airy landscape, so a lot of stuff has met the chainsaw.apart from the enormous ramblers which top and tail the plot.

To be fair, I have never been any sort of specialist and can shift plant allegiances at the drop of a hat. Having an alpine moment too cos I have been building raised beds and hyperufa troughs. So many plants, so little time.

I was busy with medical stuff for a couple of days, so didn't answer until now. Bart, you do know that bay laurels get 30' tall and wide, and more? But it's your decision.

Ingrid, my current motto is 'Nil disperandum' or, as Giovanni Guareschi put it when he was interned in a German prison camp, "I will not die even if they kill me". I suspect Guareschi was a good deal more resilient than I, but I keep him in mind when I need inspiration. I thank you very much for your last post, and wish the best for you and your husband.

Rosaprimula, speaking for myself, but I believe for bart as well, I'm not trying to grow plants poorly adapted to my conditions; in fact, I go to considerable trouble to find plants that are adapted, that I can grow with a minimum of fuss and intervention. I water plants the first year, and rarely or never afterwards. The task has become more challenging in late years, but for the most part, the garden hangs on. Climate change may cause more serious inroads than so far has been the case. Malign chances like box moth occur. But as best I can tell in such a chaotic natural situation as we all find ourselves in now, I'm on a reasonable path.

Melissa, thank you very much for that beautiful message of hope, and the introduction to Giovanni Guareschi, a splendid and courageous man.

I won't deny that I almost wept when I went outside just now and saw tiny new leaves on several of my roses and even a bud on Lady Ashe! My new defensive measures against the squirrels seem to have worked, and surely there is a message there to keep trying, and the roses will try right along with you.

I sincerely hope that you will feel better soon, and also best wishes for your indomitable husband, who all these years I've watched labor at your side in the garden. I suspect that was done more for love of you than the garden, and what a wonderful thing that is.

Fantastic post, Melissa! and I'm rooting for you, Ingrid-as I hope your new roses are doing as well (pun intended-sorry but I can't help myself,lol)

Plants of the rosaceae family clearly adore my land; I've got tons of wild roses,hawthorns, brambles, spirea,etc. that are constantly trying to take over everything. Climbing roses,some old roses, and ramblers that I planted years ago are doing fine, so far, with minimum attention from myself. But Melissa's words ring true to me: " The task has become more challenging in late years, but for the most part, the garden hangs on. Climate change may cause more serious inroads than so far has been the case." Summers seem to be getting longer and hotter every year -the heat of the sun is so excessive anymore that I've realized that I have to provide shade to the younger plants that are still trying to establish,which I did not have to do in the past. So, bring on the trees!-and 30' tal -and-wide laurels, too...

As time goes on shade will become one of the most essential attributes in gardens like ours with a Mediterranean climate that is heating up very quickly. It's a trade off since roses do love the sun, but it seems to have a different quality now. My Wild Edric rose has the ugliest blooms this summer compared to any I ever saw in the past, and it's a disturbing reminder that conditions are changing very quickly.

Here in Italy, during July all the fruit we bought was tasteless and immature-farmers had to harvest it far too soon because if left to mature on the tree it just BURNED. That's how bad it was.

I was actually referring more to myself, Melissa, after spending years and £££ trying to grow roses in a woodland. Although you might think it obvious, it seemed that desire trumped reason (for me), trying to grow plants which needed more sun than I could offer. And as for the allotment - I went through a similar trajectory attempting to grow prairie type plants in a sunny and open, but impossibly lean and dry soil...before finally getting the message that I cannot fight nature. And worse, 'nature' is no longer stable but drought and heat is becoming the signature of our usual summers.

Sorry you took this to be some personal slight.

Bart, Ingrid, we all need more TREES. If I ever get any energy back I'll return to planting them. It's quite gratifying, for example, to see the area we designate as the small triangle, part of a humping hillside that gets quite wet when it rains, and where we've planted numerous trees, particularly the very tough and well-behaved flowering ash, along with oaks, hazelnuts, Viburnum lantana, Cornelian cherry, and other odds and ends. I mention this as a particular spot where it's wet enough even in drought that plants grow, so a pleasure to go inspect. In keeping with our slide-prone area, I think the hillside there is building up to buckle, and I want to keep that from happening, by anchoring the hillside with roots, and by absorbing all the water that ends up there: hence the dense planting. The neighbors' property uphill is a hay meadow, as the small triangle was itself when we bought the property, and there needs to be a brake somewhere. This is just one of a zillion projects, of course. The hillside further to the east is much drier, and harder to get trees and shrubs growing in. But the last time I looked, the miniscule flowering ashes I planted there a year or two ago were still holding their own.