If you are almost anywhere in the Midwest, I don’t need to tell you it’s hot! In southern Indiana, we’ve also been dealing with humidity. How humid is it? It’s SO humid, it feels like you’re broiling. It’s SO humid, you need to grow gills to breathe. And, It’s SO humid, the fish are carrying umbrellas. You get the idea…it’s been just nasty humid.

Dealing with Humidity

The only reasonable (or sane) time to garden is early in the morning, which is hard to arrange for me since I need to leave for work about 7:30 a.m. and don’t get home until 5:30 p.m. So, I’m generally a “weekend warrior”, leaving most of my gardening until the weekend.

Although it had rained nearly every day all this spring, the only moisture we’re getting now is the humidity in the air. Watering is a necessity – at least for the plants we just planted this spring, the containers and the fern bed. To tell you the truth, that’s all I’ve been managing the last few days.

I tried looping a soaker hose around the fern bed, but not every fern or hosta was getting watered. I’m going to have to re-arrange the soaker hose, or add another soaker hose or something. I also need to add a LOT more mulch to several beds.

Maintaining the Garden

Last weekend, I did maintenance – deadheading spent flowers, trimming up the Amethyst Falls wisteria, a Jane magnolia and the azaleas in the front doorway bed. I also pulled out billions and billions (and billions) of sweet gum and tulip poplar seedlings. If I had a penny for each seedling I’ve pulled out, I’d have enough money to hire a gardener!

I forgot that I intended to treat a beautiful Ash tree in the front yard against Emerald Ash Borer; I’ve got the treatment, just let it slip my mind. I’ll get it done this weekend (maybe).

The Asiatic lilies have finished blooming and are going dormant. Gray-headed coneflower, butterfly weed, common milkweed, purple, orange and white coneflowers are all blooming; Eastern swallowtail butterflies, bumblebees, hummingbirds are frequent visitors. Tall (or Garden) Phlox is just gorgeous right now. Nowadays, there are several cultivars of tall phlox which are pretty resistant to downy mildew – which is good, because with all the humidity, a lot of plants look like they are wearing white powder.

I bought my four year old grandson, GTr, a little wading pool, which he enjoyed. To tell you the truth, I was tempted to get in myself, but the pool is way too small for my big posterior! Still, I didn’t mind getting splashed by my happy GTr!

I even found myself wishing for fall weather…but, it’s a good ten weeks away, at least in southern Indiana.

I bought the flamingos in the photo as a joke on Wonderful Husband. It’s just not healthy to take yourself too seriously, after all. Besides, you can’t have a garden without flamingos and gnomes!

Stay Green (and cool), good friends!