The Summer Garden

I know everyone is talking about how high the temperatures have risen in their part of the world so I won't bore you with details about what is going on in my neck of the woods....but it IS HOT and HUMID, more so this year than others, or so it seems.  This, after the cold winter we had, is not good for any garden, least of all one in the South.

I hibernate in the summer, just like we did in January and February when I lived up North.  It's not the heat, as much as the humidity.  At least in Florida we had the beach.  Here the only water in sight is the lake and frankly, I don't like lakes.  I'm just as finicky about what I can't see underwater as I am about what may lurk under clear water.  I don't do pools either, except for a few, and I'm too old to run through the hose in the backyard, although I welcome the respite when I'm caught in the yard by the sprinklers.

I stepped outside for a few minutes yesterday to clean up the vines that strangle the gardenias and now threaten what's left of the rose bushes.  Madame Mere likes to have cut flowers in her apartment, even though she can perfectly see them from the big window in her living room. I spent hours planting stuff for her to enjoy the view but, for her, it's not the same.

MM's living room and bedroom windows front and left.  Mortitia's Garden is on the right 

Clematis, roses, hydrangeas, gardenias, gladioli, peonies and a splash of angelonia all bloom in sequence throughout the spring and summer; but she likes them inside, in a vase,  so I cut a few just to make her happy.  The grass in the backyard is fescue and it hates the heat; so in spite of the small fortune I pay TrueGreen, it wimps out until it cools down.

The gardenias have come back to a point.  I think they know they will be replaced unless they put on a good show in early Spring.  There's no point replacing them now if we get another winter like we had last year.  Gardenias and the mop head hydrangeas (hydrangea macrophylla)  are the most susceptible to freezing weather and frost.  Neither bloomed this year.

The rose bushes on the lower right in front of MM's window hibernate in the heat and come back in September, or so we hope. 

Here are the dahlias coming up in Mortitia's Garden, so named six years ago after a failed experiment with wild flowers.  Some of you may remember....

Coneflowers  were planted and are thriving around the dahlias.

Mortitia's Garden is my daughter's garden and we are forbidden from cutting any flowers without written permission; but I bought the dahlias, so I'm exempt to a point.  Now that she's away and it's too hot to go outside,  MM and I are enjoying them inside.

This small dahlia has been growing in a pot on our deck.  It has bloomed since June!

And this little coneflower is having a bad hair day having to wear The Cone of Shame for the next few days!

I'll show you the rest of the garden next.