No Desert This August - Our Helper Wrote - "Time To Mow Again"

The rollicking storm,  which moved through yesterday, was just the boost that all the flowers and vegetables needed. As a result, the grass and weeds are thick and growing fast too.

As readers were clucking their tongues over all the mulch on our gardens and fenced areas spread during the last year, I was patiently toiling to add even more. "Your scorn is my energy!"

Un-mulched soil will absorb some rain and let the rest run off into the street. Our front yards are sloped toward the street, so slowing down the drainage helps all the vegetation.

Another factor is evaporation. The back yard is flat and tends to pool up with long, heavy rains. But the sun evaporates water faster than I imagined - with 95 degree days. I filled the wheelbarrow and saw the water disappear rapidly, just from the sun.

But that much rainwater on mulch wakes up all the soil activity, sending it into early spring activity, with fungi growing, bacteria teeming, earthworms digging, beneficial insects preying.

Evidence - one distant neighbor does nothing for his two KnockOut roses. They were perfect this spring and looked like a display for a gardening magazine. He mows and trims his grass away from the walk, but ignores the roses, which are now barely alive after a summer of heavy rains, even now.

Flowering and fruiting plants want a steady supply of moisture and constant pruning or picking. I cut my KnockOut roses by  50% twice already. Now they are at 5 - 6 feet tall again - and blooming a bit too fast, thanks to the heat. They add a lot of color to the yard when blooming but that does require pruning and cutting off spent flowers.

Borage - aka Bee Bread - flower.

If beans and tomatoes are picked, they flower and fruit again, but they also need water for that to continue at full speed. The  Borage does not care - that herb just flowers, drops seed, and starts new plants. The foliage is floppy and the stems are weak and hollow, but the bees and hover flies love the constant supply of food. I leave the Borage alone in the backyard, and it never stops blooming because of this cycle of dropping seed and growing more. Some easy-to-grow (invasive!) flowers - like Feverfew - do the same thing.

I grow Borage amid the roses and along one fence.