No equitable rainfall

TPP hates to hear about the Carolinas drowning in hurricane rain water, and truly TPP feels bad for my many inlaws that live there.  Too bad they can't share a couple of inches.  Our area is bone dry (again) and no good opportunities for rain are in the offing.  Systems have passed to our west, our north or our south, sort of missing  us all the way around.  Farmers are getting a good dry jump on maize and soybean harvesting (the clouds of dust arise in all directions).  But winter is more about drought and dry conditions than it is about cold, so this gardeners advise is keep watering all those new plantings or they will die by dehydration over the winter.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day

This is quite unheard of having a Garden Bloggers Bloom Day (Sept. 15) and not telling TPP?  How can this be?  It's not like this blog is hard to find, and it is known to feature blooms (every Friday, nearly).  Search on Friday Fabulous Flower to see if you missed any.  
In the good news department, the two woodchucks (Marmota monax) that had taken up residence in our gardens, one under the shed, one under the dining pavilion, took the bait so to speak, a piece of cantaloupe, pretty succulent when its been dry. Both were relocated to a wilder area some distance away.  Both were quite handsome, darker coated beasts, and one was exceptionally wary & TPP had tried several times to entice his entry into a trap, but to no avail.  Nice animals but they eat too much and dig, dig, dig, so bye-bye.  Almost as bad as tree rats.  
Finally it rained; about 1.3 inches in our gauge, and we could use more. After more than half a month without rain, things were mighty dry.  Stressed trees were dropping leaves.  Ferns just shriveled and died back. Watering could only help the newer items. 
Some very good friends brought TPP a bag of Northern Spy apples.  Wow!  They are so good!    
Identified some sunflowers for a Master Naturalist.  Their garden was being overrun by black-eyed susans, so TPP also loaned them the "Sod-buster 5000", a tool of his own making.  Nearly lost in the fall prairie vegetation was a Helianthus divaricatus, a woodland sunflower, appropriately in a shadier portion of the garden, and then some Helianthus tuberosus, sunchoke or Jerusalem artichoke.  Here's the former showing the big petalled ray flowers and the little disk flowers.  Hope that's bloomin' enough.  Note the leaf blade is decurrent down the petiole and is three veined at the base. 

On average, USA doing OK

Florida nearly got washed away, as did Houston; the west is burning; and what passes for TPP's lawn is crunchy and dry.  So, on average we doing OK.  And of course your choice when  dealing with new plants is simple, water it or let it die.  Both cost you money.  The other problem is that just dragging the hoses around is quite a bit of work, sorry, exercise.  Lots of leaves dropping even from well established old trees, so mowing generated so much dust, TPP thought he was going to stop breathing, oh, actually he sort of did because lawn dust is one of the things he's sensitive to. It's snot like he had a choice.  Maybe the tail end of Irma will wander far enough north to bring us a drop or two of rain.

This morning smelled like the tropics

The tropics often has a particular smell in the morning, sort of an earthy smell, like what comes from fresh rain on dry rocks or soil. The word for this smell is "petrichor".  And it's very pronounced in the wet tropics after a rainy night followed by a sunny morning.  This morning here in the upper Midwest  it was a very pronounced smell because last night it rained after several days of dry conditions, and for Feb. 21 it was a positively tropical 60 degrees when TPP stepped out to get his newspaper. This sort of mixes with the smell of composting leaves.  So every now and then conditions produce this smell that says "this smells like the tropics". 

Mini-drought over?

It's a wet one here in the upper mid-west today.  It was slow to get going, just light over cast and a light drizzle.  But then after Mrs. Phactor bad mouthed the weather, it's been raining quite hard ever since.  This is the same system coming up from the south that drowned Baton Rouge, poor Baton Rouge. TPP has seen rain falls like that, measured in feet rather than inches, and he's been flooded out of a study site, but that was in the wet tropics. Here in the upper midwest, there are times when living in the Highland neighborhood is a good thing. Soil that was parched and cracked a week ago is now forming puddles around our yard. This usually translates into at least 2 inches of rain, so this mini-drought, about a 2.5 week dry spell, typical enough for August, is over for now.  Now prior to the drought this area had gotten some 4+ inches of rain, and now another heavy rain. It never seems to come just an inch at a time, and unfortunately this is something we may have to learn to live with as climate change models predict bigger weather systems of longer duration.  The leaves in the maize fields had curled, a sign the plants need some watering; the leaves will be uncurling now.  
The summer has  been quite wet so far because the rhododendrons have not needed their irrigation system, the pond hasn't needed any topping up and in fact has needed some draining, so our water bills have remained within reasonable limits.

Summertime, and the gardening isn't easy

It's been a hot June so far, and almost too dry.  Highs in upper 80s and low 90s dry out the soil and wilt plants quickly. Any plant that doesn't recover from the afternoon wilts needs watering.  The real problem is when you've planted quite a few new plants it keeps you busy, and uses a lot of water even if rains are adequate.  Last two rainy spells have been just in time, coming after a week or more of dry, and because our rain comes in thunderstorms you can get missed.  This time the area was fortunate. More violent weather passed to the south going east; you don't want to trade rain for hail or wind gusts. About dawn a front of thunderstorms arrived, not too violent, but enough to make a scared black cat clingy.  It dropped at least 1.5 inches so far, enough for a good soil soaking. It takes at least half an inch of water a week to keep a garden going, and if using containers, watch your plants closely because they require more frequent watering. The lawns were getting crunchy (they never get watered) and annoying chiggers have appeared, a few have gotten their blood meal at TPP's expense already.  
In other news the potting mix used for the tomatoes has too much nitrogen in it (didn't notice) and TPP has some magnificent vines, which is not the point. Vines may pay off later, but at the cost of early fruit set. The cherry tomato, an indeterminate type, may need pruning.  Grew a monster vine years ago and had to prune it back.  That 3-4 foot diameter column of vine produced over a quart of cherry tomatoes a day! Eggplant are doing well if flea beetles can be kept at bay. Next problem to watch for are squash vine borers.

Rainy day thoughts

This is a rainy day blog. The day started out very early when a bat needed to be chased from out room. A few hours later the day dawned all blue, clear, and beautiful. If it stayed that way the afternoon would be hot and humid. But some overcast moved in gradually, so the day stayed relatively cool, and just as gradually the rain began, first just a mist, then a light sprinkle, then a drizzle, then it rained. It's the kind of rain that gets you wet when you're out in the rain forest even when you have boots and an umbrella. At least it isn't cold rain. Since the front stretches south of Puerto Limon, so it'll rain most of the afternoon.
The big find of the morning was a fishtail palm that had had its frond's secondary veins nipped to form a tent for bats, fuzzy white ewok sort of bats (but Honduran? Sure. Not.). Couldn't get a picture because the tent was low to the ground and back lit, and only later did someone think maybe an iphone set on selfie mode might have done the trick where fancy flash & lens had failed. These are really, really hard to find in the wild. You learn to look for the leaf tents among palms and heliconia. These were most certainly not the bats interrupting the Phactors' sleep.
None of us are cooking our Thanksgiving dinner so no preparations to make. Our modest contribution are 6 cans of cranberry jellied cranberry sauce, with and without whole berries. Since the cran(e)berry is one of the few native North American fruits to be domesticated, it isn't well known or easy to find down here in Costa Rica. The Ticos always regard the cranberry jelly with suspicion, and they like such things sweeter anyways. This dinner is done especially for us gringos, and having been here for this dinner many times, it's most appreciated. The Germans don't get cranberries either, or Turkey for that matter? (Why a European bird for your American holiday feast? Turkey is a native of North America. So why the name turkey? European taxonomists were a bit mixed up about where this bird was from.)
It's fun to not be barraged by the horrible, negative news cycle in the USA, but then you start feeling guilty about not really giving a crap. You do really, but the break is such a relief. Costa Ricans have already asked if we would really even ever consider making Trump president showing that their contact with our fellow citizens is quite biased by mostly knowing the scientific types. This makes TPP think about immigrants and the immigration problem. The thing people in the USA don't understand is that Costa Ricans don't want to move to the USA, while most conservatives think that immigration to the USA is what ALL people want. If you want to fix the immigrant problem, the USA should do things that make people's lives better where they actually want to live and do live. Bullets and bombs don't do that. Think about it; Costa Rica doesn't have an army! How do you think they have the money to afford universal health care and free higher education? 
Just to show you the deprivation TPP endures in the field, here's the view from a coffee drinking perch during the rain.

Tropical field trip

The Phactors are off on a tropical field trip having pretty much gotten the gardens put to bed for the winter. It has been 3 or so years since TPP's last visit to the tropics, so this is just more or less a natural history vacay whilst my colleagues teach rain forest ecology to a class of students. Nothing makes retirement seem better than watching someone else working hard to do what you used to do. It does make you empathetic to both parties, but someone has to drink that 2nd cup of good Costa Rica coffee. Of course TPP will be called upon for his plant expertise because this is another area where no one at our institution has any similar knowledge. It is too bad Vulcan mind-melds don't work; you can only acquire this knowledge the hard way by learning it yourself, although it does help to have a mentor showing you things. One hopes that students are curious enough to explore; TPP has learned a lot by just messing with things found along the way, non-vertebrate, non-stingy, non-bitey things, and even then you get surprised by things like nettles and anacards (sumac family). Weather forecast is simple: warm, wet. Regular storms are expected this time of year, but the weather looks like the real wet season. You expect some rain in the rain forest, but too much rain keeps the students from seeing and doing a lot of things.  The worst weather TPP ever saw at this part of Costa Rica was our course record of 444 mm of rain in 8 days which is about 18 inches.  Gush. You want to hear it, see it?  Here's a very brief clip (Costa Rican Sunshine) from an early digital camera in the late evening ("first thing you need to know about rainforest"). Hopefully a few posts from the rain forest will be possible.  

So long, thanks for all the fish

It's a quite warm and beautiful Wednesday here in early October, a day way to nice to spend inside, so TPP is actually taking advantage of being retired and doing house & garden stuff. But then what a bummer to learn that the world will end today, or so some apocalyptic religious group says. Now this is really too bad because all the really good wine was consumed while waiting for last week's apocalypse during the blood moon eclipse. Who knew apocalypses could come so close together, but supposedly it has something to do with the time it takes since the blood moon to make a list of who's naughty and who's nice. There must be money in this somewhere, for someone, but if so it's because there are some seriously gullible people out there. One thing is certain, all such predictions have been wrong, so far, so TPP is still planning on tomorrow.
Here's some planning ahead advice. If you use it, buy your canned pumpkin for holiday cooking ASAP. This year's crop of pumpkin/squash was not so good. The thing about this is that 90% of the pumpkin grown in the USA for canning grows within about a 35 mile radius of Peoria. This isn't a product the Phactors use, so no worries.
The weather forecast is not promising very much rain for quite awhile. This is good for the farmers and the soybean and maize harvest is progressing very well here in our region, but this always happens after TPP plants some replacement shrubs or has other fairly new trees and shrubs to baby as the season heads into winter. Remember, the aridity of winter is often more damaging than the cold, so you have to keep things well watered, and this means quite a bit of hose dragging to reach everything (part of today's activities). Again an apocalypse would negate this advice.
But first TPP needs some more coffee.

The old man is snoring

It rained last night after breaking the low temperature record for the date, 8 July, by 12 degrees F! This morning was like early morning in the Costa Rican rainforest, warmish, relative humidity maxed out, and that wet-leaves/vegetation-slightly-decaying smell. You need at least a 1/2 inch of rain a week to keep your gardens going and our gardens got 3/4s of an inch of rain on Sunday. So the 5 and 3/4s inches of rain last night was a bit excessive! Watch out downstream! For the 5th or 6th time this year TPP had to drain an inch or so of water from the garden's lily pond. So the average amount of rain for the month of July has already fallen. So there you have it. Weather that you can average, but no average weather.

Well watered June gardens

The first week of June has left our gardens well-watered with 3-4 inches of rain.  TPP had to remove water from the lily pond and will probably have to do so again today because of the 2.75 inches of rain in the last 24 hours. This is some 200-300% more rain than average. Fortunately the real heavy weather with high winds and hail passed just south of us. Can't remember when the low spots in our yard have been flooded so frequently. In late August and September it will probably be a drought. Too bad there's no way to store it all. Our rain barrel capacity is just 100 gallons. These weather fronts have our local conditions flip-flopping wildly, first aseasonally cool, cats-on-the-bed & blanket cool, now hot and steamy, a near 30F change in daily high temperature in one day. If you don't like the weather in the upper Midwest just wait a few minutes and it will change. Fortunately our neighborhood sits on a bit of a rise so no worries about damaging floods. People living on flood plains were watching out. All the rain has made weeds grow like crazy, and the only thing evening out the scales is that they are easy to pull when the ground is soft. The soft ground did assist with the removal of some wayward shrubs, spirea and a couple of old privets. TPP found a 6 foot tall pokeweed growing in a border garden; they easily get bigger, but not this early in the season. Welcome to summer.

Soggy Saturday

The midwest of North America is having a rain event. Our area is not getting flooded like down in Texas and Oklahoma, but it's plenty wet. Our fountain pond and lily pond are full to overflowing and low areas have puddles. A few recent transplants are being well watered, but the rain has stalled both field and garden work. While waiting for a lull in a local cloud burst, a young fellow said, "Have you ever seen anything like this?" Acutally yes. Us tropical biologists get a whole new perspective on rain. One year our field trip to Costa Rica got over 400 mm of rain in 6 days.  One year TPP survived a monsoonal wet season where his weather diary had the same entry for 44 straight days: low overcast with light to heavy pulses of rain interspersed with a few real deluges. Everything mildewed.  Houseplants that were just moved outside for the summer are probably enjoying getting washed off and thoroughly rehydrated, but it's too much rain for a lot of plants. Having missed a window of opportunity, TPP still needs to plant some summer squashes!  Even if things get much worse, the Phactors neighborhood is what passes for a hill here in the flatlands.   

Soggy September weather

Usually September is a fairly dry, fairly nice weather month. August had above average rainfall, so things entering September were not too dry. TPP made the observation 3 days ago that some rain would be nice or a few things would need some watering.  Hoo boy!  With a total rainfall approaching 4" in the past 48 hours, everything is well watered now OK. Usually this time of year the lily pond needs some topping up, but now a couple of inches will have to be drained off. Newly planted greens will have had plenty of water. On the down side, this much rain clearly demonstrated where the chimney flashing problem is located, and a contractor will have to be hired to fix things up on the roof side and to replace old (ancient) plaster below that has been degraded gradually over a number of years dating back to before our ownership. As they say, when it rains, it pours. Not sure how this will affect our prairie or the maize crop that is predicted to be a bin buster. With cooler and wetter than average weather, this area may receive an early winter.

A bit of water relief

Recent rain "events" have simply missed us, so after a pretty good soaking rain almost two weeks ago, we've had virtually none, although people only a few miles away got soaked. In general it takes a minimum of 1/2" of rain a week to keep plants going, and that's well established plants.  New plantings need more, and since our gardens have plenty of new plants, hose-dragging has been a major activity.  A lot of plants are in their growth phase, so now is the time to provide some fertilizer and keep soil moisture at a decent level.  Last night some spotty storms dropped a couple of showers, but only about one quarter of an inch, half of what we needed this week. Of course, rain or the lack thereof also affects our prairie, and two weeks ago we were slopping around in standing water, not the ground looks as dry as a bone. Of course the prairie is still nearly a meter tall in some places, and our plots are getting hard to find. As night time storms roll in, one of the kitty-girls who is scared of thunder usually alerts us to an approaching storm.  Even the water lilies needed some water because the lily pond has to be kept at a certain level to keep the pump and filter system working. Nothing worse than watering your water lilies.

Finally fall color

Finally the first of our plants with good fall color have changed.  It wasn't that long ago that it still looked, felt, and sounded like summer.  However, it's October 31st!  And there are quite a few things still to turn color, but it will be a short color season because the leaves are falling fast and it won't last.  This Japanese maple really lights up an area near our garden pavilion and the peachy-pink color contrasts so nicely with it's very dark bark.  In general it seems as though spring started about 2 weeks early and fall is running 2 weeks late.  The good news is that almost 3" of rain has fallen in the past 24 hrs and it was really needed to recharge the soil moisture and get the trees well hydrated going into winter.  TPP is no fan of red maples; they don't do well in this region because it's too hot and too dry for them in the summer.  However this year they are striking with deep red foliage and all too many people will fall for them.  Have to run, some more Jedi knights have come to the door seeking treats, but their mind tricks won't work on TPP.

When it rains, it sometimes pours

This is both literally and metaphorically true.  A nice band of storms passed through the region dumping a nice quantity of rain.  Following a most excellent seminar by a former student who has become a very 1st class biologist, the department retired to this student's favorite watering hole.  Upon emerging a heavy dark band of clouds covered the entire western horizon, and TPP was a good 20-25 min walk from home. Weather moves fast out here in the Midwest and experience indicated this would be close and it was, but TPP made it with 3-4 min to spare.  Us field workers can walk pretty fast when needs be.  At any rate, our gardens got a tad over 2.25" of rain, and some much needed relief.  Also just in time for planting the new tree mentioned a few blogs back.  It poured.  So it did metaphorically too.  NSF shut down while in the middle of a complicated and somewhat confusing collaborative grant proposal submission, and a lot to things need to be done still, but maybe the shut down will provide a bit of time relief.  Then my copy editor emails that the book ms is ready to be returned, and does TPP want the punctuation edits just accepted so that he could concentrate on the more substantive edits?  Sure, why not?  Now a nearly 700 page ms is no small matter, and who knows how many edits that might contain.  These things all get done when TPP is not teaching or in other ways interacting with students, or eating and sleeping.  Oh, and Lincolnland has mandated that TPP take his ethics training and his crime reporting training in October too.  TPP thinks he'll plant a tree and go buy some apples.

Water relief and toast

Hooray!  All of those burnt offerings paid off and the notoriously fickle Midwestern weather gods presented us with an inch of rain overnight.  Plants, even many of those that had shown no signs of wilting, definitely look perked up this morning.  Plants that still don't look good are now officially in the category of toast.  One was a new planting, a small conifer, that just declined from the time it was planted.  Another is a male holly bush.  It joins others on the toast list, a nearby yew, a large and ancient one, and a nearby redbud, large and ancient, the latter of which is so close to the neighbor's driveway that it has claimed several rear view mirrors of cars backing out.  This tree is now in the burnt toast category; if we'd known it would have been gone years ago.  Strangely from our perspective this redbud doesn't exist since is lines up with another redbud about 5 feet closer so it all looks like just one tree.  None of these hollies has done particularly well, none of them look very good either, which is another way of getting onto the toast list.  The latest were half a dozen dwarf mock orange shrubs.  They looked so cute in marketing pictures; ours never even came close to looking so good, so they got basally pruned.  Now if you lack a male holly for pollination, then one of the better features of the other hollies, red fruit, will shift from the positive to the negative side of the balance sheet.  The removal of the hollies, the yew, and the redbud will generate some considerable opportunity for new plantings.  Ahhh, you're taking out a redbud (someone always says that).  Well, there are probably another dozen or so around the garden, and yesterday TPP probably removed 50 more seedlings; a redbud removal is not a problem.  

Some things are good dry, gardens are not one of them

Dry wine, good.  Dry humor, good.  Dry clothes, good.  Dry garden, not good.  Plants are beginning to suffer as a drought takes hold of our particular area of the upper Midwest.  Any percent chance of rain that isn't 100% (it's actually raining) doesn't seem to be good enough because rain events are happening to the north and south of us.  Now dry lawns don't even concern TPP a little, but lots of plants are beginning to wilt, especially with some hotter weather that always seems to come with drought, and then not recover late in the day.  Now compared to last year, it's not bad yet.  This was the first week that we had to do a lot of watering, and some gardens have yet to be watered.  Here TPP should point out that a friend gave Mrs. Phactor a new rain gauge for her birthday, and it hasn't rained since.  Unfortunately, when we're away, and some upcoming travel is planned, plants really do get neglected, and keeping up with just the minimum amount of watering is a major job.  Some things don't matter.  The tomatoes are basically terminal; some potted replacements will provide some fruit but later, if they get watered.  Any disease that interferes with water transport just makes things worse when it's a bit dry. Anybody got a good rain dance?  Even hanging out laundry didn't do any good today.  A major front moved through the area, but no rain!  Of course sometimes some decisions get made for you.  A big old yew is in decline as well as some American hollies growing near it, and we had been talking about redoing that part of the garden, so now it looks like the decision is being made for us.  Ah, well.

The mid-west is wet

Drove across northern Missouri yesterday to get to KC.  The overall impression is one of a giant mud puddle.  All in all pretty wet places were getting inches of rainfall, and not all of it is coming down gently.  In general this is quite a depressing and annoying weather pattern this year, and quite different from the weather of a year ago.  Our field work is suffering, our gardens are suffering, and the grass is growing.  Presently the prairie canopy is at about 1 meter, and we had to add our tall flags to plots so that they can be found fairly easily at least for another month or so.  Does TPP have to mention that one of our treatments is nutrient augmentation?  Oh, will this make things grow?  Oh, yes!  Our soil is on the heavy side and when it's wet it gets sticky, and you just shouldn't mess with it, but you still want to get some stuff planted.  The windows of opportunity have been few and brief.  It's been easier to keep up with mowing the lawn, and that's been hard enough.  Farmers aren't just dealing with wet soil; they've got flooding.  A lot of flood plain agricultural fields are way too wet for planting, or flooded, and if they have been planted, they will probably need to be replanted, but it's getting late in the season to plant maize.  Because of the demand and the price, maize has been plenty popular, so lots of frugal farmers have bought their seed already to get a discount, so it won't be easy, or cost effective, to switch to soybeans.  Planting early on flood plains is a bit risky, but the USA's crop insurance program basically assured farmers of getting 80% of their anticipated sale no matter what, so while everyone likes the idea of insurance to iron out the ups and downs, the current program seems to encourage risky agricultural behavior.  These are the things you think about when driving across the great midwestern farm belt.  Also observed some very poor conservation where rather steep fields were plowed without any contouring or other erosion suppressing practices, and torrents of reddish-brown water were washing off of them.  Some farmers need a dope slap; why they treat soil like everyone treats water, as if it were an inexaustable resource. In one area the wind preceding a storm was kicking up clouds of dust, top soil, and even in flat places like these fine soil erodes at a rate of 5 tons per acre, yet many people fail to believe this is happening.  And then another line of storms moves in, and you begin to listen to the radio in case of tornado warmings.  About the time you think perhaps things aren't being so violent, you pass a wooded area by a river where the tops of all the trees have been snapped off, recently.  So it was a bit of a surprise when the sky turned a funny color this afternoon, blue.  Delightful, as the heat and humity soared.  Welcome to the great midwest!

Soggy Memorial Weekend

Oh, the gardening plans we had!  Very ambitious, indeed, but over 3 inches of rain will sort of dampen your enthusiasm for gardening.  Things are so wet that water is standing in all the low areas and not only did very little gardening get done, but it will be days before things are dry enough to plant some things.  Well, this puts the Phactors way behind schedule, and as if that weren't bad enough, a couple of editors are telling TPP that he's behind schedule too.  Quite a number of weeds met their demise due to Mrs. Phactor's diligence.  Clearly she's a mudder.  And the weather has been cool too; in the 30s just 4 nights ago. It's keeping some cool loving plants in flower longer, but pushing back the flowering time for others.  A couple of large Deutzia have been in a flowering holding pattern for several days as well as a Kousa dogwood.  Ah well, it's a very different year from last year which was so warm, so early, and this year is late.