Beautiful day and thirsty twigs

So, what’s everyone else doing today? I bet you’re not on the Internet. :>)

Today is the first time all summer that a day dawned without One Single Cloud in the sky. Not one. Anywhere. Gradually, though, a few moved back in. Little wispy ones that you can see through. They can stay—they’re not getting in the sunshine’s way. And the humidity? It’s gone. Only about 44% and that’s about as dry as bleached bones in these parts.

I’m back to playing catch up in the yard today. The grass was tall and the weeds had made wide inroads again. The weather report looks as if, perhaps, I may be able to get everything under control again and even move forward before the next rains arrive. This would be like....SO EXCITING!

I have to admit that it’s a little toasty out there and I’m in a minor state of wilted disrepair, but it isn’t even in me to find fault with that. I’ll take this any day over what we’ve had the last several weeks. This is just thrilling!

Despite the rain that we’ve had...and had...and had...I found that my new little redbud twigs were thirsty this morning. They are in sand, after all. But I still wouldn’t have expected the soil (so-called) to be dry so soon, especially not with such a deep layer of mulch on top of the soil. I’ll have to watch them carefully until they’ve had a chance to develop deep root systems and that’s going to take a while.

I don’t have an outside water faucet on the front of my house so watering the trees with the hose is a real pain. Dragging the hose out from behind the house and through flower beds and looped over the fence, uncoiling and recoiling as I go, wears thin really fast. But the trees need their water. So…

It’s not the most elegant of solutions, but I saw it in a gardening magazine a few years ago and stored the idea away: Clear two liter soda bottles with the bottoms cut off, inserted upside down in the soil. I dug a pit for them on either side of the trees, fairly close to the roots (but not close enough to harm them) and buried the bottles to about 3/4 of their height. All I have to do is fill them up with water a couple of times and soil around the tree roots becomes saturated pretty evenly. I can tell when the soil is saturated because the water level in the bottles stops dropping. I can also feed the trees this way.

The only thing I’m not sure about is how often I should refill the bottles. The redbud trees don’t like soggy soil, but they don’t like bone-dry soil, either. Evenly moist soil is a trick when dealing with sand. Even though I mixed organic matter into the soil around the trees, it still dries out pretty quickly. But, so far, so good. The trees are growing like mad, putting out new growth and new leaves on itty bitty branches. They don’t look much like trees yet, but they’re trying awfully hard.