From the beginning of July last year to May of this year, there was barely any measurable precipitation — the rain gauge sported cobwebs, and the snow shovel gathered dust. Although I did water several times over late summer, fall and winter, it was not enough to compensate for natural irrigation.
I discovered just how spotty the coverage my hose and sprinkler technique provides when a screwdriver would not penetrate the ground in several places I tested in March. Planting required chipping holes in what felt more like concrete than dirt.
All of this did not bode well for the upcoming season. Then, in mid-May, the rains arrived — and what a difference 5 inches of rain made to a desiccated garden. Obviously poised for just such a weather event, many plants jumped into action. Stunted penstemons stretched and grew buds. Tall bearded iris, peonies and roses, some of which had not bloomed for several years, sang for joy with flowers. Spuria iris, getting the spring moisture it requires, bloomed for the first time in a decade.
Seemingly overnight, poppies of several types grew into giants. Glowing orange horned poppies (Glaucium grandiflorum) doubled their anticipated 2-foot height. Biennial Armenian poppy (Papaver triniifolium), with its filigreed foliage and sherbet-orange flowers, quickly grew waist high. Greater celadine (Chelidanum majus Flora Pleno) also got enormous, its scalloped gray-green and hairy infrastructure buried in lemon-yellow anemone-like flowers.
Blue-flowered spiderwort, normally a foot tall, topped out at 2½ feet. Pink pincushion-flowered Knautia macedonica Melton Pastels grew taller than I am. Groundcover Lamium maculatum Ghost started reaching for the sky, climbing nearby iris and daylily fans. More than one neighbor has commented on an amazing foxtail lily (Eremurus himalaicus) by the mailbox, with its curled, 2-feet-long flower scapes held aloft on 5-foot-tall stalks. It’s been there for years but only with sufficient spring moisture did it reach its full potential.
I’ve been so excited by this floral extravaganza that I did not notice when things started to go awry. I’d been leaping over overgrown patches of catmint and basket-of-gold for several weeks before I realized they’d consumed an entire path. Having invited a friend to see this spring’s phenomenon, I suddenly visualized said visitor getting whacked variously in the shins, arms and face as they attempted to traverse the jungle that I’d been, until that moment, so admiring.
Not to mention that because no rain has fallen since that May deluge, plants that are late starters are smaller than usual. They are buried under poppy herbage, where they will not thrive with all sunlight blocked. The advance-guard goliaths, now deprived of continuing moisture and reaching the end of their reign, are set to collapse all over the garden like large souffles.
Having recovered my senses, I’ve started putting an end to the all of this garden giddiness, cutting back and pulling out so there might still be something in bloom in the coming months.
But — like all things hedonistic — wasn’t it fun while it lasted?
