drought – My Little Country

Well, despite the threat of my last post, I am still here in Texas. This past summer was far worse than the last, with some days getting well above 100 degrees and no rain. It was like living in an oven for three months. While winter is a common time for people to develop seasonal depression, I think summer is worse for me.

Extreme heat, wet-blanket humidity, a plethora of stinging (and flying) insects, no rain, and watching your entire yard collapse into a brown crisp (formerly known as a garden) is depressing to me. I love to be outside and Texas summers are just brutal. But despite the searing heat and no rain, some things survived and even thrived in the garden. And if they weren’t thriving in August, they were resuscitated with some late September rains. So who were the superstars of the drought?

A friend gave me some gladiolus corms this spring, and here they are in June, alongside some Rudbeckia. They were the cheery greeters of the early summer this year. I hope the corms survived! We still had some rain in June, but the last measurable rainfall was June 26th for our summer. 😦

The garden two days before our last rainfall on June 26th:

The veggie winner would have been the yard long beans this year. Even in the heat and sparse rain, they put out new beans constantly. I took several pictures of the almost mature beans, only to discover later they are all grossly out of focus. Oh well. You get the idea. As for taste, they are delicious! I steamed some and roasted others. They are extremely mild and crispy.

Baby yard long beans:

There were some very close contenders to the 36″ mark!!!

For flowers, there were two big winners this year: Celosia and gomphrena. I cannot imagine not having these in my future gardens from here on out! They laughed at the drought and while they did flag a little by August, when the rain came again in September, they put out blooms full force! I had several types of celosia, but the most impressive was a giant fuchsia cockscomb type that came up right by our side door:

And the gomphrena was out of control. This is a variety called Atomic Purple from rareseeds.com:

I had two other varieties; one was a light lilac and the other was white. Such a fun flower!

The other veggie winner was this cool pepper. I have no idea what variety it is; I actually planted it in spring of 2022 as a seed and ended up not planting it. Feeling bad for it, I overwintered it and planted it spring of 2023. It has rewarded us with tons of small purple and red peppers. There are so many different colors on the same plant.

Once again, the watermelons took over and the Ozark Razorback cowpeas went bonkers. Those are definitely surefire winners if you are facing a drought! I also had my Senator zucchini make a comeback as well as lemon squash and some Japanese eggplants.

Here’s a mullein that popped up. They have been reseeding themselves in the garden since we have lived here. I always enjoy seeing them!

So here’s to the 2024 gardening season. May we receive a lot of rain and may the summer temperatures be mild! My biggest challenge is figuring out a good watering set-up. I really need a drip system but since my garden is very “here and there and everywhere” it’s going to be a chore to run the lines the way I need them to run. Still….better than hand watering! That’s my most dreaded chore in the dead heat of June-Sept.

Are you planning a garden next year? Do you have a fall/winter garden this year?

Here is my late spring herb garden, picture was taken today. In it, I have several kinds of thyme, rosemary, horehound (I’m not making that up), oregano, dill, catnip, catmint, basil, chives, and sage.

So! For the last several weeks, we have had NO RAIN. I mean, I was starting to really get worried there for a while. Typically, our April/May months provide a pretty good amound of rain to tide us through the beginning of summer. I cursed myself for not collecting more rainwater when it was more plentiful. I have been collecting rainwater in plastic trash cans for several years now, though not very efficiently. I tend to forget about them…but not this year! I used my gathered rainwater exclusively for my baby tomatoes this year.

Anyway, after this mini dry spell, I really got to thinking about water usage and collection. I mean…almost on the verge of obsessively thinking about it. How much water do I use washing eggs? How much do I use in the shower, or bath, or rinsing plates?

There was a good reason for our grandparents using a ‘dishpan’. I so happen to have two ‘dishpans’ and so now when I am washing eggs, or rinsing plates, I have been dutifully collecting the runoff and putting it in my garden. This water is called ‘greywater’. Your water that is used in your potty is called ‘blackwater’. Anyway, there is definitely a lot for me to learn about re-using greywater. I hope, one day, to have my kitchen and shower water diverted to my gardens. Today, I even scooped out the bathwater after the kiddos got out. This is NOT something you want to apply to a veggie/herb you will eat raw, though…..as, well, you know…there are ‘booty germs’ in it, but still, it watered the daylily garden anyway.

Well, so the other day, we got a really nice rain. I ran like mad to set out all my water collection buckets (read: anything that would hold water). It’s amazing the amount of water that runs off of a building during a good storm! We had tons of water, which we deposited into a couple of our water trashcans. I also went and bought an aquarium gravel siphon @ WallyWorld, to, theoretically siphon out bath water (note to Self: the law of physics prevent this from happening in the manner I had hoped. So I failed Siphons 101) So, today I was walking around our shop, and we have 2 jet skis that we are keeping for someone. The place where your feet ride was FULL of rainwater. Well, so….I took my siphon and my trusty 5 gallon buckets:

And, out of all 4 footwells, I got almost 20 gallons of water! So then, I took that, carried it to one of my trash barrels, threw a piece of screening that I found on the side of the road (I KNEW I’d find a use for it!!!) and poured the water through, to screen out the yucky stuff: