RAINY DAYS
I grew up in a western New York town located about ten miles from an agricultural area known locally as “The Muck”. The Muck had been created from drained swampland in the first third of the twentieth century and was famous for its soil fertility. Onions were the biggest crop and millions were harvested from Muck farms every year. Local people always said that there were only two problems with Muck soil–in dry years it blew away and in wet years it floated away. I am reminded of that these days when I look out over my yard. With the recent monsoon-like weather, the soil is just about ready to float away. Thank God I don’t grow onions for a living.
This kind of rainy weather is great for people who hate to water lawns and gardens, or have invested in water barrels that collect rainwater from downspouts. It’s also a boon to gardeners who have moisture-loving plants like ferns, trolius and astilbe. I planted a trolius or globe flower in a shady garden bed two years ago. Since it did very little, I forgot about it–until now. The last fourteen days of rain have transformed the plant, which is a member of the buttercup family. It has produced a lovely crop of new, dissected green leaves and not one, but two golden flowers that shine forth in the misty gloom. I have nearly broken an arm patting myself on the back for being too lazy to get rid of it. If the wet weather continues, the trolius will probably grow to behemoth size, strengthening it sufficiently to get through the drought that we will almost certainly have next year.
Rain makes weeds grow faster than you can say the word “rampant”. It also softens the soil, making it easy to pop the unwanted plants out of the beds and borders. Whenever the downpours diminish into fine mist, I go out and do a bit of weeding. Even the giant pokeweed that is the bane of my gardening existence comes up by the roots–something that is virtually impossible in dry weather. Since the lack of sun has kept the pokeweed from starting to produce its enormous crop of seed-bearing black fruits, getting the plants out of the ground now is a timely step on the path to pokeweed eradication.
The rain is both a blessing and a curse for those of us who mow our own lawns and trim our own shrubbery. Both are growing like wildfire, thanks to all the moisture, but neither can be cut effectively in a downpour. I like to get the mowing and hedge trimming over and done with as quickly as possible and use the corners of the day–early morning and early evening–to take care of those chores. With all the rain, I am forced to mow and trim whenever a dry day happens–whether or not it is convenient. The only consolation is that while the most onerous tasks require dry days, the things I love, like weeding, planting and puttering, can be done in the rain.
Rainstorms tend to be hardest on big showy flowers like roses, iris and peonies, drowning their petals and bending canes and stems to the ground. One day of rain won’t hurt most of these beauties, but repeated rainstorms will ruin the blossoms. When this happens, the only thing you can do is sigh deeply and cut back the plants, knowing that there will always be a next year for the peonies and iris and another flush of bloom for many of the roses. On the plus side, it seems to me that aphids dislike rain almost as much as humans, so there will be fewer of them sucking the juices out of your plants–at least until the first dry day.
If you are a gardener bothered by allergies, working outdoors on rainy days is the best possible situation. The rain drowns the pollen, making life a great deal more bearable. Precipitation may moisten your face, but the absence of pollen means your eyes won’t tear up. It seems like a good trade-off to me.
I don’t know if groundhogs can swim, but I see less of our resident groundhog on rainy days. He is particularly fond of buttercups, so if it were dry weather, I would fear for my magnificent trolius. I suspect that when the groundhog emerges from his large hole into a driving rainstorm, he restricts himself to nibbling the clovers that grow closest to his doorstep. This is good news for the expensive perennials that are just a little farther away.
In rainy weather, the orchid cactus complains, the sedums droop and the strawberries tend to rot rather than ripen. Most of the plants, though, just go about their business of growing, flowering, setting seed and then retiring for the season. The best gardeners take their cues from the plants and adapt in similar fashion.