Month: August 2017

We started Monday, August 21 with an eclipse. I wasn’t here, I had to go out of town so I don’t know how much of it was visible from home. But by Friday evening our area, and south of us, was in hurricane survival mode. Hurricane Harvey landed in Rockport, TX on Friday night. Even here in Austin we are feeling the effects. Yesterday, Saturday we had 4 inches of rain. Today, Sunday we’ve already had over 2 inches and we are still getting a slow steady light rain. Last week we had a high of 94 degrees and yet today it has barely made it to 72. At 5:30 pm we sit at 69.

Harvey is large enough (landed as a category 4 hurricane) that even parts of Louisiana are getting rain. And at this point, Houston is practically underwater.  What a difference a week makes.

A slow steady light rain may not seem like much, but the ground is now saturated. And they expect rain for many more days to come. Flooding is happening in many areas. Here where we live we’re actually okay since we are on a slight hill. The water still drains down hill, so we’re okay. That’s not to say the roads below us are in great shape with no flooding, its just to say that where we are is draining.

But its still warm enough that plants outside are green. I fear grass, weeds, and who knows what else will become a problem in the coming weeks.

Its been nothing but a hot summer. We have been in the high 90’s here at the house. Austin itself has been triple digits. Heat index has been triple digits even here at the house. Not my favorite weather.

I planted seed, salad, lettuce, squash, and some other things. With the heat they are coming up, but its taking lots of water to keep them alive. Such is life in Texas during the summer.

Finally. After weeks of threatening/promising/teasing us, we got rain. As in 1.8 inches in a fairly short period. Well lets say we got 1.7 inches quickly then the rest of it took all day. But we got rain nonetheless. And we needed it. Just in the couple of days since it rained trees are looking better, leaves are greener, weeds are growing, the ground and seeds are responding. It was good to get the rain.

I’ve also replanted some seed. Since the squash plants didn’t do so well, they died but looked like they had been eaten at ground level, I planted more squash seeds. I also put in some broccoli, salad, lettuce, kale, and our beloved beets. With the few days of cooler temperatures the squash and salad/lettuce seeds are already coming up. Since we’re still early August I think we have time for both sets of seeds to produce crops before winter sets in. At least I hope so.

Other than that Pat and I had some interesting gardening challenges. We found that DH had put water pressure restrictions on some of the valves. Unfortunately it meant that quite a few plants were not getting enough water. So Pat changed a lot of watering heads. The plants have been happier. But these are some of what we’ve been checking out. We also found out that some plants were not getting water at all. The valves were closed. Because of the way DH had set these up, we did know until we actually attempted to water and checked the heads. That’s how we found out some plants had not been getting water all year. No wonder we have had unhappy plants! But all is doing better and the plants are happier.

But now we’ll need to begin looking at what to do for next winter. It will come, even if we have a few months to go. Time passes quickly and we need to start preparing for it. Scary thoughts.