I suppose we got ahead of ourselves at my house thinking that most of our shrubs and trees that suffered severe damage during the deep freeze of last winter had somehow survived. Fact is, they had survived and even flourished. Especially the azaleas. Now, unfortunately, I think they are all going to die.
It isn’t from freeze damage, though, it’s this darn drought. We can’t win for losing.
Just in the last week I’ve watched a healthy holly tree, that did have some split bark from the freeze, dry completely up and turn to dust. The holly berries look like little boogers all black and shriveled.
Two other trees — I’m not certain what they are, but are of the decorative variety — are barren, and I’m pretty sure, dead. It is really a shame too.
The worst tragedy of all, however, is the azaleas. After the freeze they turned completely brown and lost all their leaves. Back in the summer, wife Danny, and I — mostly wife, Danny — cleaned out and cleaned up the azalea beds and removed what seemed like a mile of saw briar.
Slowly but surely those shrubs began to make a 180 degree comeback and were fighting to hang on up until the last couple of weeks when some of them began to turn brown. Now I’m pretty sure, again, that they are dead.
I’m fighting with my little garden the same way. It’s just fall greens and a couple of tomatoes and some brussel sprouts, but watering with a hose isn’t helping much. It is barely keeping them alive, and to add insult to injury it has been windy up on our little hill too. A hot, dry, desert-like wind, mind you. I’m beginning to wonder if Moses is creeping around out there somewhere waving that plaque staff of his in the air.
Another problem with the wind, besides drying everything out, is the whirlwind of dust it blows up. Dust on everything. Dust on the porch, dust on the rockers, dust on the truck, dust on the car, dust in the trees, dust in my eyes, dust in my nose, dust, dust, and more dust. Choking, red, dirt road dust.
I don’t think we even sat on the porch a single summer night watching for lightening bugs, gazing at the moon, and listening to the coyotes and hoot owls in the woods. Of course most of the time it was too hot for that anyway.
Back in the early part of spring I spread some weed and feed around the yard up close to the house where I like to go barefoot. It was supposed to kill those mean little stickers that can stop a barefoot person dead in their tracks not knowing whether to step backwards, or forwards, or just sit down and cry.
I think it worked but now the grass is so dead and dry that walking barefoot acrosss the yard isn’t that pleasing of an adventure as it crumbles and crunches beneath my weight. I guess next year I’ll try it again assuming it did work and killed the stickers this year.
If there is a silver lining in this long dry spell, perhaps it is the fact that dead grass does not have to be mowed. Personally I think I would rather be mowing than crunching.
I don’t look forward to that either at this point. There are a few bushy spots in our yard from those tall spindly black seed grass things out in the front. But the front is closest to that dirt road and I know for certain once I start mowing through that it is going to be a whirlwind of a dust storm that may never settle down.
At the same time, I do worry a little bit about those ditches out front too. They are dry as all get out and the grass on their banks has long since turned into one big ole fire hazard. Knowing that lots of folks traveling up and down our road have no problem with tossing their trash out the windows on a regular basis makes me wonder if they might not be doing the same thing with some red hot cigarette butts. They sure throw the empty cigarette packs out, so I know they are smoking out there.
If one of those hot sparks gets in a pile of that dry straw and that wind kicks up again everything might go up in a puff of smoke and never need mowing again.
So litter bugs let this drought be just one more reminder to not be tossing anything out your windows, especially not anything that is on fire.
Thank you in advance.
