Re: [gardeners] heat wave broken!

Penny Nielsen (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Tue, 3 Aug 1999 12:46:11 -0300 

Hi Penny

You sure have had a time of it with water lately.  Glad to hear your heat wave has broken.  Your previous note reminded me.  Chatting with a neighbour the other night who's on sick leave but can soon retire.  Her husband was due to retire in August but they've asked him to say on until Nov.  She's sooo pleased.  she's dreading the the day he retires.  Worse than a kid I gather - is bored and constantly wants to be out running around.  Can't sit still.  She's quite content doing not much in the house.  He does put in a veggie garden but not what I'd call a dedicated gardener nor is she.

Good luck with your watering and shrubs.

Penny in Halifax, N.S. 

>>> penny x stamm <pennyx1@Juno.com> 08/02/99 10:29PM >>>

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



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