For about two years we have been staring out our bedroom window at a bare, red-clay area between the house and the driveway. This is how it looked.
I was just getting ready to start some landscaping when I took this photo. Now it looks like this.
There is actually a small Japanese maple in the middle of the bare area between the foreground vincas and the back ground vincas. The vinca plants have been doing quite well. Unfortunately, it has been so hot and dry here that they were beginning to wilt. I put about 30 gallons on them on Saturday, all from one of our rainwater collector tanks, which you can see at the left side of the house.
The hot and dry weather has caused some of the hardwoods to start turning color. I had not noticed this maple until Saturday.
The color is nice, but it’s way too early. Some other maples have started to turn red. Some of the other hardwoods, including oaks, which usually turn brownish yellow, are starting to turn brown. No color. That is sometimes a bad sign, especially for dogwoods. I have noticed that dogwoods whose leaves turn brown late in the summer often don’t come back next spring. I have mentioned before that we have lost most of the native dogwoods that used to grow on our property. We will probably lose more after this summer.
The ash around here are dropping green leaves now while other trees are going straight to brown. And it’s too early for that to be happening anyway.
Yikes! I sure hope there’s some rain in your forecast soon, if it’s not too late. You did such a beautiful landscape there with the vincas. Love the colors.
Paul — As I am writing this now, on Sunday, almost all of our maples have turned, and some of the oaks are completely brown. We got rain, but too little, too late.
Robin — As I mentioned, we got some rain, but that’s all that is predicted for the next week. The vinca plants really appreciated the rain we did get.