On a scale from 1 to 10, I give this growing season a 4. There are numerous reasons, but the biggest one is that July was just plain rough. We got several whopper storms with winds that shredded my plants and knocked out our power twice—once for 19 hours and once for 27 hours which meant I got to replace all of our perishable food twice within 2 weeks. One of the storms dumped 4-6 inches of rain in the area (4″ in my yard). Manhole covers blew off, cars floated or stalled on city streets, and because all of that water had no place to go, it ended up in a lot of basements including ours.
My Orienpet lilies were a few days away from peaking when the first wind storm paid us a visit in the middle of the night. Most of the lilies just couldn’t hang on to their petals as they were thrashed about by the wind and sheets of rain. All of my tall zinnias and most tall perennials (like bee balms and coneflowers) were eventually flattened by one storm or another. Remarkably, I was able to salvage most of them, but they are battered and frayed.
All of that rain means more diseases. Some of my rudbeckias shriveled up and died:
I’m not sure what’s troubling these asters, but they didn’t start to wilt and look sickly until after the storms, so it could just be too much rain:
My daylilies have been disappointing this summer, too. If you recall I divided most of them late last fall. However, daylilies set their blooms for the following growing season in the fall. Because I didn’t divide my plants until late October, I think I missed that window of opportunity. I’ll have to wait until next summer to see the fruits of my labor.
The last two weeks of July were beastly-hot, and thanks to all that recent rain I currently have a world-record-breaking swarm of mosquitoes in my backyard. It’s a rowdy gang that doesn’t even care if you keep moving the entire time you’re outside. They will chase you and eat you alive.
The Japanese beetles are also back in larger numbers this summer. They are making mincemeat of my roses and some of the large-flowering marigolds. And the silly goldfinches are yanking the petals off my zinnias:
To sum up, it’s a big ol’ mess out there, but farmers and home gardeners expect that. We know that there are no guarantees about what the season will bring when we put seeds or plants in the ground in the spring. Thankfully I snapped some photos in early July before things took a turn. I’ll just dwell on images like these instead:
