Re: [gardeners] heat wave broken!

George Shirley (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Tue, 03 Aug 1999 08:23:05 -0500 

penny x stamm wrote:
> 
> Cynthia -- yes, yes -- you were right!  For the moment, the heat wave
> is broken!!!!!!  The important thing is the lower humidity -- hip, hip
> hooray!
> 
> I was locked inside until 2:00pm, because the A/C engineer was
> supposed to call and come over -- the furnace flue is dripping
> condensation on our new air conditioner, right down into the electrical
> connections!  I finally located the man on his car phone, and was
> allowed to go outside to work. At this point my main job is spreading
> 20 bags of shredded cedar mulch. We're expecting a county-wide
> water shut-off, and I'd like to preserve whatever I can glean.
> 
> Of course, at 2:00 o'clock, the underground flower beds get watered
> by soakers. Only what I heard certainly wasn't any ordinary soaker~!
> It was Niagara Falls....   Dear Jimmie had tossed a hose down the
> cellar stairs -- and it just happened to be the full water supply for the
> veggie garden, wide open!  Ye gods!  I ran around into the house, and
> yes, sure, the cellar was under water <sob>....  Put an old fashioned
> hand wringer on the tubs, and four beach towels on the floor, and
> went to work.
> 
> But that wasn't all...  I turned on the zone for the entire front of the
> house
> because a section of shrubbery at the left side of the front door looked
> very unhappy. And of all the dumb things to have let happen, it seems
> that when we transplanted two wonderful rhododendron bushes I had
> been growing, we pinched back the underground hose with a 5" hairpin,
> to get it out of the way, and of course, cut off the available water from
> that
> point onwards, completely!  In this heat and drought, that 6x6 section
> never got any water for 4 weeks!  Last night you would have died
> laughing at the sight of me, not knowing WHY everything looked so
> peaked, as I carried gallon Clorox jugs outside full of plain, room temp
> water, and dumped each one on top of a plant...  !  There are 3 rhodies,
> 5 Delaware Valley white azaleas, 5 dwarf hinoki cyprus, and a cut-leaf
> Japanese maple....  that made 14 trips back in to the kitchen!
> 
> Once the water supply officially gets restricted, the system is to allow
> us to water anything except the lawn which we can manage with a
> sprinkling can. 1st offense if caught :  $1,000.00 fine. The neighboring
> county edict already is in effect...   We had 6 tenths of one inch of
> rain
> during July.
> 
> <Sigh....>   Penny, NY
> 
Ahh, Penny, if I could only send you some of the almost 3 inches of rain
we got late yesterday afternoon. It all fell in the space of an hour and
did no damage because we're used to it. I do love the rains we get here
but prefer them to be gentler and kinder than those we've been getting
lately. TV weatherman says we're running well ahead of where we should
be on our rainfall. Unfortunately it will rain, cool off to low
eighties, rain ends, sun comes out and back to ninety plus temps again.
The only thing left in the garden are crowder peas and chiles. Have new
green beans, cukes, tomatoes, yellow-eyed beans, and chard coming up for
the fall crop but I'm afraid I'm going to have to shade them until late
September. Hope you get some rain soon.

George