I discovered my Asahi zuru in dire straits–walked out on the porch yesterday and noticed that most of its leaves were curled and drying. I questioned the waterboy–who swore he had been giving the japanese maple plenty of water. Then he later recanted, stating that maybe he missed it after all. So, basically, the poor tree has been struggling through the past few 100 degree days…can it be rescued?
Despite several gallons of water to saturate the soil, I believe more than 75% of the foliage will be lost. I am just waiting to see when they will be dropping off. I hate to write off this JM even though it lost most of its variegation last year and probably won’t get it back. It’s still a Japanese maple and pretty in that JM way.
One of my Titan vinca seedlings–still planter box squatting–bloomed this morning: a pale pink with rosy center. But where are all these blasted black ants coming from? They seem to favor the vinca and are chewing tiny holes into them–all of them! I’m readying the spreader to drop the insect-killer on them!
The newest salvia greggii in the salvia bed has bloomed finally. Also, I’ve noted that the confetti lantanas and Purple Star verbenas in the front bed are enjoying their new home. The recent Hot Lips salvia addition keeps growing and growing…soon it will sprawl like the other Hot Lips in this bed. The dahlberg daisies are irrepressible, non-stop bloomers. As is the Thai basil, shortly before I gave it a haircut.
After my brief rant this weekend about not buying mixed-color packets of seeds, I espied this red Easy Wave in my petunia planter bowl on my way to work this morning. I’m so very pleased to see it, but now it makes me want to grow even more petunias. It will hit 100 degrees today but these petunias seem to do quite well in the planters, as long as they get a drink every day.
I’ve had a run-in with scrapers and sploggers about a couple of years ago when my main site was exposed to the public. After locking down the info and making the domain private, I’m now thinking of more proactive ways to protect a blog site. Since the garden info is slowing being spun off to its own domain, I’ve taken action to post a Creative Commons license after each section with the help of the Open Attribute plugin. I’ve also bolstered the contact form by going with the Fast Secure Form, related to the SI Captcha anti-spam plugin. I’m wary of opening up comments, pingbacks and trackbacks at the moment until I determine if FriendConnect will allow users to register and follow my blog without a formal WP-based registration.
Meanwhile I have to be vigilant. I have Akismet, and I need to review my Analytics stats to ensure that I’m not being targetted by leeches. Of course, I also can look up who’s been duplicating my content on Copyscape.com. And I should think about watermarking my photographs…amateur as they are.
