It was hot, hot, HOT again this week, following on from last week. There were predictions are for even more heat, and the forecast was right, as the thermometer next to the hummingbird feeders shows. The feeders are filled with a sugary liquid, and the hummingbirds hover whilst feeding, sticking their long beaks into the artificial flowers. They seem to prefer this to the natural approach of sipping nectar from real flowers. After a night around mid-20C, by mid-morning it was 34C, and it got hotter as the day progresses.
This continued all week, and at night the temperature didn’t really drop. And no rain apart from one brief thunderstorm on Friday afternoon. So, we spent most of the week staying indoors and not doing very much. There was a bit of un-tidying to be done, getting things back to a more normal state than in the photo shoot the “Reality Build” series in Designer Dream Homes magazine. Outdoor work was rescheduled to match the temperatures – I watered the garden as dusk was falling each night. What we have for a garden this year is a bit unbalanced. The whole of the back of the house is just pine-covered clay with no planting. We are waiting until we can get the much-delayed swimming pool constructed before we get on with hard landscaping (mostly putting in raised beds for both decor and vegetables). So there are the beds in front of the house and the long planter bed in the Great Wall of Dahlonega. At least, this gives us a chance to get to grips with what is realistic.
Gardening at the front of house has thrown up a few practical issues. The beds next to the house are built upon the gap between the concrete foundation walls and the original clay. When shuttering which provided the mould for the foundations was removed as the house was built, the gap between the foundation walls and the original clay was filled with 1 inch diameter stones and tamped down very hard to provide a solid base for the construction. Which was good for the house, but it means that there is only a foot at most of soil above this rocky layer. We did our best to excavate some of the rock backfill when we planted a small flowering cherry, but we clearly have not been able to provide the tree with adequate growing room (and I also suspect that there is little or no drainage, so the tree roots were probably sitting in waterlogged conditions. Either way, the tree is now very unhappy, and we don’t feel that it will survive.
The planter bed is another story. We want to establish planting of perennials which will come back every year without too much work on our part in future. Of course, whatever is planted will grow and grow, so we have a fair number of relatively small plants occupying large spaces. In a way, that’s an advantage at present. We don’t have much in the way of vegetable growing space elsewhere, so the planter bed is an interesting melange of veg and flowers. French beans (which are supposed to be dwarf free-standing plants – but nobody seems to have told them) are climbing up the stems of oriental poppies, and padron peppers provide low-level greenery in front of tall flowers. Tomato cages hold Indigo Blueberry tomatoes nestle next to daylillies and achillea. It’s all a wild mix, but attractive.
The big going-out event of the week is Sunday at the Corkscrew Cafe in Dahlonega. There is a monthly food and wine tasting function – the portion sizes make it a full meal. We are going with our friends Julie and John – come back next week and hear all about it.