Global Warming Gardening

Here's a kinda depressing, but sadly necessary article about gardening in the age of global warming. I'm doing pretty good so far, having amended the heavy soil in the beds, covered them with landscape fabric and thick layers of mulch (the bottom layer of which could be compost at this point). I do have a compost pile, but I haven't warmed it or turned it or any of those things you are supposed to do, but I'm figuring it's getting good stuff at the bottom... Oh, and I have discovered it's a great place to overwinter semi-tender plants! It is located between a fence and a shed and thus sheltered, so when I tossed a Gerbera Daisy and that lovely purple-flowered plant I blogged about last summer/fall back there because I thought they were too tender for this zone and didn't have room in the house, I figured they'd become compost. But dang if I didn't go out there and find little Gerbera blooming away on top of the pile last week, and purple flower leafing out halfway down the side! I planted plucky little Gerbera in one of the flower beds in the backyard:
Oh! and also the ones I had planted in the front beds as annuals last year are coming up from the ground! AMAZING! So either they are hardier than I thought or we just had a warmer winter---ahhhh, global warming..... So back to Hot Gardening (I must look up that linked site in the article advertizing an "Inferno Strip Garden") ---I'm trying to plant mostly natives or native-adapted perennials and trees, although I am tempting fate with a fairly extensive collection of roses, both in beds and minis in pots, but then again--most of my mother-in-law's rose bushes survived some five years of neglect when she got sick, then went into care, and then died, so they must be pretty tough. Of course they looked pretty rough when I got here, but they perked right up when I watered them.....oh, yeah, global warming and drought....water-rationing....H2O wars---great! The downside of global warming is also that with longer growing seasons, come longer allergy seasons--just think, we can all be wheezing and sneezing, hacking, and rubbing our itchy, watery eyes ALL YEAR ROUND!

But I digress into gloom and doom.... I actually just bought one of the plants they mentioned in the article: 'Agastache' or 'Giant Hyssop' (fam. Lamiaciae), except the nursery had it labeled with one of its popular names: "Hummingbird Mint," which is appropriate since it both attracts hummingbirds to its flowers and has foliage that smells of a cross between peppermint and citronella. My cultivar is "Apricot Sunrise"--I think it's two-toned purple and orange, hopefully I can get a picture up here in the future. I planted a related plant--Mexican Bee Balm in one of my backyard beds I think--I'll have to see if it came back up. In any case one can get it at nurseries around here. I have to say--I have plenty of hummingbirds and bees...and every time I dig in one of my beds, I find earthworms, so...so far so good...

I hafta say--what the article said about getting more rain in winter and in great volumes was certainly true here this year---it has rained buckets and buckets--3-4 inches in one storm any a number of times this late winter/early spring. They were even lifting the long-standing burn-bans and some of the water-restrictions most of Tejas has had during a year-long drought. I hope this doesn't mean that once it hits May it won't rain again until next February....but then again, like I have said, all we need to do to initiate another drought is for the gutter guys to come and install my gutters (which they were supposed to do Thursday or Friday, but did not show up, so I guess we have a temporary reprieve...)

But I have to say----I will greatly miss the lovely Maple should it go away from our Northern climes, unable to adapt and thus unable to survive the inexorable inching upwards of temperature zones. All the leaf-peeping and maple-syrup making will retreat into Canada and these United States will be much lonelier and more drab, not to mention less sweet, without them. NOW GO DO SOMETHING TO REDUCE YOUR CARBON IMPRINT!