How is it late July already?  Between a new role at work, family in town, and various gardening activities, I’ve been slacking on the blog posts.  Don’t judge me too harshly, though; while I’ve not been writing, I haven’t forgotten about you — I’ve been out touring gardens, working on my garden, and taking lots of pictures (which means I should have plenty of awesomeness to help us get through winter next year!) But for now, I thought I should share a mid-summer garden update.  

Now if you’re in the KC area, you know the weather has been ridiculously hot and dry this summer.  To make it worse, we apparently have a dome over our property, as it seems that we missed most of the rain that has popped up in other nearby cities. The garden is definitely not looking its best and I’m not above admitting that I’ve had some casualties due to the lack of precipitation.  Though I’ve tried watering with a whirling sprinkler the last month or so, I realized that even after an hour of watering, barely any moisture is reaching the plant roots through the mulch.  Next year I may invest in about 10,000 feet of soaker hose (slight exaggeration) or a drip irrigation system, but for the rest of this season I’m back to the time-consuming task of hand-watering.

Rain or no rain, I had progress to make.  After falling in love with a Fireglow Japanese Maple on the Master Gardener tour back in May, I promptly added one to the garden by creating a small bed at the top of the dry creek bed and surrounding the maple with hostas and brunneras. I have a beautiful iron loveseat and chair just waiting to be sanded and painted that will act as a “fence” to support a clematis and give the bed some definition.

Next came the new lotus bog.  Not at all planned this year, by the way.  It went something like this:

(At Swan’s Water Gardens…)

Me: “Oooh, lotus are 20% off this weekend!  I love lotus and must have one…but, I don’t have any more room in the water garden.  No problem…I think I’ve read you can grow them in containers!”

Kevin at SWG: “Yep, you can grow them in containers.  You can also build a lotus bog — just dig a 2x2x2 hole, line it, stick a piece of drainage tile or PVC with holes drilled down to the bottom, put in gravel to about ‘here,’ then dirt to about ‘here,’ leaving about ‘this much’ water on top.”

Me: “Hmmm…maybe I’ll do that next year.  For now I’ll probably just do a container.”

(Shopping for container…)

Me: “Screw it, if we’re going to have to spend that much on a container, let’s just build the lotus bog this year.”

Anywho, as my husband likes to remind me, I broke the rule of “no big projects between Memorial Day and Labor Day” to build a lotus bog…because I had a lotus and I needed somewhere to put it.  And then I had a lotus bog that looked bare and out of place, so I had to create a mini-garden around it. (You may recognize this type of logic from last year’s crazy garden building marathon.  It’s a sickness.)  I may do a future post showing the construction, but for now, here’s the finished product:

Just this weekend, I figured out what to do with the giant hole in the garden where I removed the unhappy Dwarf Hinoki Cypress (moved it to the lotus bog garden).  I stopped by a local garden center and they still had signs up for a 4th of July 50% off Red, White and Blue ceramic pots.  SCORE!  I’m always envious of the big, beautiful ceramic pots that you see in botanical gardens and stunning private gardens.  This was my opportunity…so I chose carefully, and, voilà!  Only a few hours of compacting, leveling, and planting later, I have a new focal point in the garden.

Not to be outdone, the water garden looks more and more beautiful as the plants continue to grow and water lilies bloom, though I struggle to really capture the beauty in photographs.  Must be the camera, right? One of these days I’ll pick up a better camera and take some additional lessons.  It will also help as the plants continue to grow and cover some of the rock.  We recently had family staying with us, and everyone loved the water garden so much we just lined up the chairs along the edge of the deck and spent most of our free time out there!

The water garden has been the easiest part of the garden to maintain this summer, I swear.  Add water when you need to (which is often during these hot, dry spells), throw in some beneficial bacteria weekly, clean the filter monthly, and do some general plant clean-up as needed.  No worries about “are the plants getting enough water” or “am I OVER watering?”  It stays looking beautiful and is a natural magnet to humans and creatures alike.  The birds absolutely love the stream, I see squirrels grabbing a drink every now and then, and of course Blaze and Beau think it was built just for them.

Like any good gardener, I have a stash of plants I still need to get in the ground, and plenty of other gardening projects to finish up before the end of the season.  It seems I never have enough time to implement every idea I have in my head! I’d like to install soft lighting throughout the garden for an amazing nighttime experience, build a small arbor with patio swing, put in some raised beds for veggie gardening next spring, and add more plants around the water garden.  By the way, I still haven’t even touched the south end of the garden, which was on my to-do list for this year.  Perhaps I’ll have time this fall, but I’m not optimistic considering the other projects I have on my list.

Stay tuned to see how many of those projects I actually get done, and send some rain my way so I’ll have more beautiful pictures to share with you in the next month or two.  In the meantime, I’ll be putting together some posts from my latest garden touring adventures to share with you.  How’s your garden looking this summer?  Is it suffering from drought and heat or have you mastered the watering game?