Take Heart…….Fall is coming.
The jokes about baking lasagna in a mailbox or frying an egg on your sidewalk are just not funny anymore…..we get it. It’s hot. Debates about Climate Change are ever present, as Southern Gardeners are just waiting for the promised cooler weather of Fall.
Southern Gardeners must have grit in their souls. The deep summer heat is enough to exhaust even the most determined gardener. Summer heat is oppressive. The extreme heat becomes like the gardening “thief of the night”…..coming to kill, steal and destroy all gardens and their gardeners. I look around at my landscape of gardens. Everything is thirsty and clinging to life. I spend my free time hand-watering, trying to preserve all that I have worked so hard for. That’s a Texas Summer.
It is the extreme heat of August that makes Fall so appreciated. Waiting on Oxblood Lily and Spider Lily Season is like a child’s anticipation of Christmas morning. Fall lilies are nature’s way of rewarding the Southern Gardener, as if to say “Well done, good and faithful servant.” In just a few weeks, the rains will come. Gardens everywhere will be filled with deep red lilies. The oppressive heat of August will be completely forgotten. Waves of flowering heirloom bulbs and native plants will bloom until the first freeze, and I will be back in the gardens, surveying new growth (instead of trouble-shooting).
Take Heart, my friends. Fall is coming.
Happy Gardening!