Heat Lovers in Zone Seven

White Queen caladiums and begonias

Has the sun scorched your flowerbed or garden?  Are your spring flowers gone and you need a color pick-me-up? Here are some flowers that love the heat and it is HOT here in our Zone Seven plantings.

I have mentioned caladiums and begonias several times before in previous blogs, but it bears repeating.  These are go-to shade loving plants for hot weather.  You provide the water and the fertilizer and they will provide the blooms.
 

Lantana

Lantana is a reliable bloom that will flower until frost.  It comes in shades of white, purple, orange, yellow and pink.  Butterflies adore it. What's not to love?  If you are lucky and have a protected spot here it will come back next year from its perennial roots.

Moss Rose

 Moss rose is rather old fashioned, but you can't beat the heat loving properties and the colourful flowers.  Portulaca grandiflora has the full flowers and the smaller leaf.  Others portulacas have different leaves and may have single flowers but they all love the heat and can flourish in a dry spot and flower.  The flowers may be pink, orange, white, red or any tint or combination.


My final choice for a heat loving flowers is Gazania.  Thanks goes out to my friend Rachel of New Digs landscaping for encouraging me to give these a try.  They have proven to be trustworthy perennial workhorses at my gardening day job, with their bright white, orange, and yellow blooms!  The clumps are getting large and will soon be ready to divide.

Gazania

 I am reminded just how important it is to get feedback and share information.  We get feedback from others and it gives us an idea for a new solution.  Rachel told me that she had great success with Gazanias and even though I wasn't sure they were worth it, I found some marked down and I decided to give them a try. Now two years in, I am delighted at the results.

Just another reminder.  We can share our experience and learn.  That is a great part of community.  It is a safe place to get some feedback that is different; outside your own experience.  The results can be beneficial and beautiful.

Tis the Season to be Salad

Salad choice #1

Tomato and cucumber richness has initiated the summer of salads.  The 100+ temperatures make it the right choice.  Take one or two achingly ripe tomatoes, add a cucumber or two.  Use a base of romaine with some celery.  Make up some home-made ranch dressing.  Add whatever embellishments and protienesque touches you want (boiled eggs, cheese, ham, walnuts).  Finish off with a generous grind of black pepper and whoops there it is.


These salads usually occur after a hot session in the garden.  I come inside, remove sweat drenched clothes and stuff them in the washer.  Take a shower, dress, assemble salad, then rehydrate, relax and eat for an hour or so.  I'm telling you, it is the way to go for summer lunch times.

Second salad choice

My new favourite addition at the moment is a thick slice of a "Big Rainbow" tomato.  These large sized tomatoes are yellow with a colourful pink star-burst on the bottom.  They have a sweeter, fruity taste.  Many people call this a "low acid" tomato, but I have read that they have the same acid as any red tomato.  The difference is that they have higher natural sugar content than their red brethren.  The higher sugar level makes them taste "sweeter" which is interpreted as "less acid", but the pH is the same.

I used my solar clothes dryer (clothes line) and hung up my washed garden gear just before I made my salad.  After I finished making and enjoying my salad I went out to hang up my freshly laundered bedspread.  The clothes I had hung up before lunch were already dried.  The breeze and rapid drying temperatures have pretty much removed all of the wrinkles as well.

Big Rainbow, Better Boy & cherry and grape tomatoes

Seriously...two thing to try this summer.  Super salads with local tomatoes, and rapid clothes drying via the line instead of the machine.  Lose weight, save energy, save money, get vitamin D and enjoy that clean clothes smell and a little dose of self-satisfaction with your excellent choices.  It is OK to be happy about good choices you make.  God likes it too!

Water Bans and Wildfires

Today I saw the alert on-line for a mandatory water conservation notice.  No outside watering of any type if I correctly understand it.  Wow, this is painful!  I understand the need to conserve water, it is just hard to see all my work drying up and dying. Maybe the rain doesn't fall on the just and the unjust...hmmm, not sure that I've got that quite right!

I have been trying to water carefully.   As soon as I saw the notice for a voluntary water ban I removed all the plants that were not growing well.  I tried to avoid watering during peak usage periods.  However, our absence of any rain pretty much has us stuck!

Water conservation dishpan tool

I guess I will begin using a dishpan for washing my dishes and save the water to put on my perennials like rhubarb and my blackberries.  I can take baths instead of showers and use that water for my new ferns and stuff on the deck.

Some of the on-line comments about the water conservation notice talked about the need for adequate water for firefighting.  I just saw another on-line news item about a wildfire in the county.  The dry, windy, hot weather is a terrible recipe for outside fires.  I hope everyone understands how much we risk if we aren't all careful at this time.

Our home burned down years ago.  No one was injured but we lost an incredible amount of stuff.  It eventually helped me see that possessions just aren't that important.  However, a destructive fire is dangerous and a waste of resources.  Anytime there is a fire when the temperatures are this hot, the firefighters and rescue workers are in real danger.  My prayers go with them.

Disasters like fires, storms, or droughts, should remind us that we have responsibilities as members of the larger community.  It should cause us to grow in compassion towards those who are suffering.  The Husband and I went with a group of friends to volunteer after the Joplin, Mo. tornadoes, and we saw that kind of concern and compassion expressed for others.

Two photos from Joplin, Mo. tornado damage

Problems on a local level bring the reality of larger issues into focus.  Invariably institutions, such as local governments, won't get it all right.  Mistakes will be made.  Some people will be benefited more, some people will be penalized unequally.  It can be a catalyst for improvement or a source of bitterness.


Yesterday I saw my state representative on the way to a check-out line.  We stopped to rhapsodize over the joys of grand-parenthood.  I told her that I was proud and delighted with the job she has done as my representative and she seemed genuinely touched.  It made me sad to realize how very critical I frequently am of people who have responsibility for a larger community.  And not just me.  I look at Facebook, television, papers and almost every other current events avenue and I am horrified by the verbal brutality and partisanship.  I understand that there are important issues, even lives at stake...BUT...do we really need to be so inhuman to carry out our civic responsibilities.  Surely if we were as responsible as possible we could help leaders do a better job.  Hold them accountable and help them do the work and give them credit when it was due.  Again I invite you to join me in praying for rain and to also pray for "all those in authority".