Weather 2011

[cohan]

Wow! Our low (for Rocky Mtn House) tomorrow is 13C for tomorrow..just a touch cooler than it has been for some days...normal high is 19C now, and we will only see that once in the next week (again, that's Rocky, we are 30km East, and could have slightly higher temps forecast farther East..

[Todd Boland]

Someone send some heat my way...please!  The weather has been crazy here...in the past week we went from 4 C high to 23 C the next day, back to 5 C the next then 19 the following and now this past three days have been only 5-9 C again.  Not surprising I have  a cold!

[cohan]

Someone send some heat my way...please!  The weather has been crazy here...in the past week we went from 4 C high to 23 C the next day, back to 5 C the next then 19 the following and now this past three days have been only 5-9 C again.  Not surprising I have  a cold!

That's nippy! Here was odd, we last had -30 in March, I think, then May was quite warm, no snow! Snow is forecast for many places in western and northern Alberta tomorrow and Sat though!

[Hoy]

I have had very nice weather the last few days here at our summerhouse. We arrived Wednesday in warm (that is 20+ Celsius) weather and it has stayed that way since
Won't last for long I am afraid. . . .

No I am sitting in the shade of the oak tree (all meals have been here too - even early breakfast) catching up with all the posts with a slow phone internet connection.

Some of the view:



In the early morning the fjord is like a mirror - not the smallest wave disturbs the tranquility. But then some not so noiseless boats approach

[cohan]

Nice view, Trond! I can imagine it does not stay quiet all day with the density of population it looks like there is..

We did not get the snow that was forecast as possible, or if we did, it was mixed with rain overnight and no sign of it... Rain possibility for 6 of the next 7 days, but June is historically the wettest month here--good for agriculture if/when farmers are able to get seeding done in May!

[Toole]

It's just over a couple of weeks until the shortest day and yet it's forecast to reach 15c this afternoon ,so still quite pleasant here.
What has been noticeable is that night temps have been so mild with only a couple of good frosts so far .....

In saying that there is very little in bloom ---just a few Narcissus and this this lone Gentiana acaulis .(I'll post it here as i don't think there is a thread for 'Sexy Plants') .   

I just love the voluptuous, corseted shape 

Cheers Dave.
 

[Lori S.]

Very nice, Dave.  Isn't it odd that Gentiana acaulis is blooming here and on the other side of the world at the same time, or is it just me??   

[Hoy]

It's just over a couple of weeks until the shortest day and yet it's forecast to reach 15c this afternoon ,so still quite pleasant here.
What has been noticeable is that night temps have been so mild with only a couple of good frosts so far .....

In saying that there is very little in bloom ---just a few Narcissus and this this lone Gentiana acaulis .(I'll post it here as i don't think there is a thread for 'Sexy Plants') .   

I just love the voluptuous, corseted shape 

Cheers Dave.
 

I don't think I'll have Gentians flowering in my garden in 6 months! How is the light level at your place midwinter

[Toole]

I don't think I'll have Gentians flowering in my garden in 6 months! How is the light level at your place midwinter

We could do with a bit more sun in the winter Hoy.

The flip side of a sheltered woodland garden is that while frosts can be up to -9c out in the open country side, we are well below that ,(less than -4c), so Datura sanguina and Japanese Banana ,Musa basjoo, (both in pots), continue to grow at this time of the year when placed under partial cover.

On the edge of the bush other 'marginals ' such as the tall Kangaroos paw Anigozanthos flavidus clump up and flower,(yellow/green), without any attention....

Cheers Dave.

[Tim Ingram]

At last the dry spring has begun to break and we have had significant rain for a couple of days - nice and persistant today. I'm not sure if it will make much difference to farmers and the wheat crop but any grower must be breathing a sigh of relief.

I've never thought of gentians as being voluptuous before! Now I see them in a different light, and of course they are!! Does this make G. verna 'sylph-like'? I do hope so.

[cohan]

Heavy downpours night before last, causing localised flooding--especially in the small town of Eckville, 11 miles from here.. lots of water in fields, and yesterday when we were going to town, ditches were full of running water, much like spring run-off, but water was even running over the highway at once junction, something I've never seen...
https://picasaweb.google.com/cactuscactus/July122011WetWetWet

[Howey]

Here in London, Ontario, it has been dry as a bone since the spring ephemerals went to sleep.  Every morning during my garden tour (the last two months), more devastation met my eye.  Plants which had been pretty impervious to the weather, just shrivelled up and disappeared...and I don't like the look of my 2 ft. high Dawn Redwood just now - after all the wire used to protect it from the rabbits, now this!  Stokesia and some of the gentians look pretty bad.  However, we finally got a decent rain last night and I feel there is lots to learn from this.  Two amazing survivors are the little Ruellia humulus (wild petunia) and the red Ipomopsis rubra.  Some of the droopers have rallied - the Monkey Flower and and Lobelia syphilitica - both native here.  Of course there are water restrictions - no lawn watering - but time consuming to spot water plants in pots and the most severely stressed plants twice a day. Wish I could send pics of all this but, since I had the worm erased and my computer "fixed", Photo Shop has disappeared and I have no way of resizing them.  Maybe Mark can tell me another way to do it? BTW, Mark, it was a very good "onion" season at my place.  Fran

Frances Howey
London, Ontario, Canada
Zone 5b??

[RickR]

Hi Frances,
"A lot to learn" is a good and useful spin to put on drought.  It's funny that you mention Ruellia humilis as a star in a drought situation.  I am not sure what you meant by "little", but in my garden the plant approaches 3ft in diameter.  I would have put it in the category of your droopers, although I agree that it is far more drought tolerant than the droopers you mention.    Perhaps it's just that my wild petunias are surrounded by even more drought resistant plants (?)

A good, simple, user friendly, free, and quickly downloadable photo resizing program (all it can do is resize) is Pixresizer:
http://bluefive.pair.com/pixresizer.htm

For a general image editor, I currently use the free Photofiltre.

[Hoy]

We're back in Norway again and spending our days at the mountain cabin. Lots of downpour here too and some floodings in lowerlyings areas but none serious so far. The good thing: No plants have died of lack of water this summer!

[McDonough]

Hi Frances, your summer sounds like our summer in New England last year, where we literally had only 1 single day in August of any appreciable rainfall, the entire summer in drought conditions the worst in about 50 years.  However, in the following spring, the losses were less than I imagined... I did lose a few treasures, and at least a dozen and a half very expensive Epimediums flat out died from the drought, or were so weakened by the drought that in spring 2011 maybe a sprig or two of life reappeared on well established plants.  I know first-hand just how disheartening it can be to see the garden collapse under great thirst, with watering restrictions in place.

This year we had lost of rain in June, but July has been HOT HOT HOT, reached 102 F (39 C) in Boston (and here) this past week, tying the record for the hottest day recorded in Boston, many other days just a few degrees less hot but still HOT.  The lawn is crisping, and plants are drooping.  We have the usual mandatory ever-other-day watering ban (unlike last year's 100% no-watering-whatsoever ban), so I take advantage of that and use sprinklers to keep the woodlands areas moist.

Glad your allium season is going well, these babies do like the heat and tolerate drought quite well, except for some of the chinese Alliums that appreciate more moisture... lost my 20-year old Allium macranthum from a Ludlow & Sheriff collection in Bhutan ; I did send a piece to John Lonsdale a couple years ago, wonder if he still has it growing.

Regarding resizing photos, I hang on to an early version of Paint Shop Pro, and its like second nature for me to quickly edit and resize images with it.  It is now owned by Corel, and is inexpensive.  ACDsee Photo Editor is another good program to use, a relatively low cost product (about $50 US).