Caught some afternoon "popcorn" showers

A bit of rain encourages everything.
While the vegetables are long gone, any perennials that surived the drought have bloomed.


These echinacea are a coupla years old, the constant drought has resulted in some incredible dwarfing... of the ones that didn't die...








The clasping heliotrope are incredibly drought proof, and the tigerswallowtail butterfly is happy to feed on this native delight.






Tree-frog onna milkweed Asclepias syriaca... They aren't going to eat the monarchs, are they?




Speaking of which...
The monarchs are back!!
Monarchs take their time getting to middle GA. I saw some monarch caterpillars in the Spring, and was surprised by the unusual earliness of the sighting, I don't know what happened to those out of time babies... these guys are right on schedule.




Always fun watching butterfly mating rituals...















There were no persimmons last year, I'm seeing some fruit this year!

Rain maker wanted

A woman in New York State complains about getting 14 inches of rain in a single week...

The Mississippi river valley is under-water, No food crops are being planted there...

Good thing we're in a drought, right? We can get out in the garden and make up for the coming food shortage...

I dunno... This is what my garlic looks like...

I can plant seeds, but they don't come up...

The desert stuff seems happy enough... as evidenced by the yucca...

the native delphinium that I posted about in Early Emergence, is in bloom.

I took pity on the blackeyed susans last week and gave them a little water...

I wish the tomatoes would do as well with as little...

still dry (reprise)

Black-eyed susans... Is why you should plant native plants... these guys are wilted, but bravely... determinedly... ploughing forward, and putting onna brave front.


It seems like nuthin but a cactus garden...

The datura have begun blooming...

n the yalluh daylilies...

And the milkweed.... Will have butterfly weed blooms in a few days as well... not sure where the monarch cats are... was watchin gulf frits lay eggs on maypops the other day, haven't seen their caterpillars yet either... jus a matter uv time...

Jackyl recorded a good summer song about the Georgia heat.... When will it rain?

one quarter inch of rain

My heart goes out to everybody that lost everything due to the weather thursday morning. It hurts to be deprived of everything....



But this blog post is about how dry it is in the sandhill garden....


How much difference does a quarter inch of rain make?


Well, as it turns out, it helps quite a bit...




common milkweed Asclepias syriaca
The one on the right is before the rain, on the left is after...

I still need a rain-dancer...

The viper's bugloss that I posted about in february is blooming.




This Oak-leaf hydranga is blooming... It's managed to live for a year out here, in spite of last summer being dry enough to lose seedling butterfly weed...



Amarylis bloom...