I’ll Take the Sun!

In July it got so dry that the U.S. Drought Monitor put us in “moderate drought” status. My daylilies were suffering bud drop at an alarming rate, my astilbes were shriveling up and the honeybees were competing with birds for a turn at the birdbath. I wanted to smack myself for pulling out the soaker hoses from my flowerbeds back in June (“These are in the way–I’ll just water by hand if it gets dry“). Watering all the beds thoroughly by hand takes over 2 hours and the task was getting a little old. We were days away from water and burning (read: grilling) restrictions when August came. August looked like this:

It started raining and it wouldn’t stop. We got 14.5 inches of rain in 24 days. That averages out to 1.65 inches a day. We shattered the all-time wettest month record for our city by almost 5 inches. It didn’t rain steadily, it came in fits and starts. Sometimes I would empty 4 inches from the rain gauge and sometimes a quarter-inch. There was severe flooding all over the area, and four people died as a result of lightning (one was struck by lightning on a city golf course, and three were electrocuted when a lightning strike caused a power line to fall into a flooded street as they waited to board a city bus in a deluge). Farmers who were worried about crops drying up in July were now concerned they would rot in the ground.

Sitting in the house day after gray day made me cranky. Summer is for gardening and grilling out and sand volleyball, and I was trapped inside like it was the middle of winter. I was running out of indoor activities. I don’t how the people of Seattle live with day after day of rain. I would go bonkers.

After the first few inches fell, the brown crunchy grass woke up and started growing again. And it grew and grew and grew. In July we didn’t mow the lawn at all. Today will be the third time in ten days that we’ve had to mow. I don’t think that’s ever happened before. My annuals and perennials perked up, my daylilies sent up new growth and some of them have even decided to rebloom which rarely happens in our zone 5a climate.

Besides the new rigorous mowing schedule, I now have a cloud of mosquitoes that follows me everywhere. I have to plan carefully before I step outside. There’s no time for admiring a new bloom, pausing to watch a butterfly or bird or pulling a few weeds. It’s get in, and get out or suffer the consequences.

But I don’t mind because the flooding is over and we’re supposed to have at least a week of dry weather. I’m just happy that the sun is back!