Hittin' the Trail

Here at PrairieTide, our mind is on the open road. Summer vacation, the two most musical words in the English language, begins in just a couple of days. Ah, the blessed time each year without appointments or To Do lists. Just breath in and enjoy the deadline-, meeting-, and voicemail-free air!

In the PrairieTide garden, the rain gauge remains sadly empty. So this means I'm doing a lot of watering to get ready for the big trip. The drought in Central Illinois was just upgraded by the National Weather Service from "moderate" to "severe," and I'm concerned the plants I've put in this year stay alive while I'm gone.

Last week, I walked out to find one of my new hydrangeas shriveled down to nothing. Just the day below the leaves were green and perky. I watered and watered the little thing, but it has not sprung back. One of the blueberry shrubs is looking down, and my container plants get watered every night, but they still seem on the brink of extinction. And all this before I head out on vacation!

Randy's gardener dad has promised to do some watering for us while we're gone. I've experimented with some water timers, with varying degrees of success. My biggest problem is that the water spickett always leaks, no matter how securely the hose is attached. Usually, I just prop up a watering can under the spickett and fill up the can while I'm watering one of the new beds. But if we are to rely on the water timer, we'll need to leave the spickett dribbling the entire time we're gone. I don't think this is going to work.

So in the mean time, my goal is to give every bed a deep, thorough watering before we hit the road. I found this article from Garden's Alive! about preparing a garden for summer vacations.

And guess what? The article is by Mike McGrath, the former editor of Organic Gardening with the goofy sense of humor. So maybe he became an internet entrepreneur after leaving the publishing world...


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Aha! A minor change to my settings, and the blog formating problem goes away! Thanks for hanging in there with me.
- posted by Laurie @ 9:19 PM