6 on Saturday – 19JUL2025 – Tolerant

Chris Mousseau

Week whatever of our summer drought. Areas north, south, east and west of us have been getting the odd thundershower but my County, or at least my part of it, jutting down into Lake Ontario as it does, has had just a few drops, literally, of rain the the past many weeks. Think crispy, dust covered foliage. Think flower buds shriveling and falling off before opening. Think petals on drought tolerant perennials half, or less, their normal size.

Or maybe, for just a few moments, don’t think too much; enjoy, instead, some pictures of flowers in my garden that are happy…or Happy Enough*. With thanks to Jim at Garden Ruminations for hosting this weekly roundup from gardeners around the world.

One of my favourite summer Alliums is Allium carinatum – aka keeled garlic. It’s short and fancy, comes in white or mauve, and looks good either up close and personal or en masse, which is easy to accomplish since it drops seed quite reliably. Very drought tolerant.

Not quite as drought tolerant are the Clematis. My texensis variety, Gravetye Beauty, only produced a handful of blooms. This viticella, Etoile Violette, is a bit better, albeit with fewer and smaller flowers.

Looking as if nothing is wrong in the world today is one clump of yellow daylilies…seed-started quite a few years ago, the clump gets larger and larger every year and seems quite happy.

A flower one might think is drought tolerant, in my experience, just isn’t. Tithonia, the Mexican sunflower, is a multi branching annual that can grow to more than two metres in height. Without moisture it stays short, leaves droop and wither, flowers wilt. I don’t begrudge giving mine (started from seeds collected last year) a bit of precious rain barrel water. Its cheery bright orange flowers attract loads of bees and, in a good year, provides nectar for loads of monarch butterflies. Here is this year’s first blossom…still waiting for the butterflies…

I do water regularly the plants in containers, including this Begonia growing in a sconce beside the back door. I’m not terribly enthralled by it…the flower colour is too pale and nondescript. Boring, even. I was hoping for a brighter, more fluorescent yellow. Like a highliter.

Also watered regularly are the veggies of course. (At least, for as long as there’s water in the rain barrels. Maybe one more week…) A friend brought be a cucumber she had started; planted at the beginning of June the vine is now huge and taking over my porch trellis. This is the first cucumber. A bit bitter from the heat, but nice to have nonetheless. My beans have, unfortunately, been discovered by the rabbits. They’re in a raised bed and have gone unnoticed in past years. I think critters are looking for moisture anywhere they can find it this summer though, and the succulent stems and leaves of the bush beans are too tempting.

Beans just starting to develop as rabbits start to munch away
It’s about 8″- 20cm – long.

A cold front passed through the other night (with no accompanying rain…) and we’ve had a respite from the scorching heat so it’s going to be a lovely weekend here. Hope yours is as well.

  • Happy Enough. The title of a book of poetry by the late Canadian poet George Johnston. I studied his poetry in high school and although I can’t remember a word of any poem, this title has stuck with me.

25 Comments

  2. Your “good enough” brought a smile. It reminded me of the “good enough” that I often use at the end of a job at work. Thanks to insects, wind, pollen, and so on, there is no perfect coat of varnish on a boat; “good enough” will do.

    I’m in love with that Allium. It looks like a cross between fireworks and a waterfall. In your photo of the texensis variety, I enjoyed seeing a hint of the original red in flowers in a couple of spots. As for that begonia — it’s beautiful in my eyes, rather than boring. Maybe it’s the heat here; it seems a nice, cool color.

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    1. It’s when you realize the ‘good enough’ is, in fact, just fine, and you cease to worry about how others may judge, that you can achieve genuine satisfaction and happiness in an endeavor. This Allium, this year….I’m thinking it actually LIKES these dry conditions.

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  3. Sending thunderstorm vibes your way. We have had plenty of rain across much of the state, so that is not my problem. Mosquitos are! The begonias are pretty, but it would be nice if they had a more vibrant color. I love that butter yellow in tulips, but it does not really do the begonia justice. I had poor germination on the beans, but have a stir fry in my future, featuring snow peas from the garden. There are pods fattening on the vine for next year.

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    1. Our mosquitos have mostly, and predictably, disappeared, and have been replaced by a bumper birth explosion of deerfly which are in some ways worse. I’m having poor germination with my tomatoes…just one or two fruit forming from a large cluster of flowers. Perhaps the plants, recognizing the weather conditions, are doing this ‘instinctively’ ?

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      1. Oooo, deerfly is not fun either! I was worried for the tomatoes and admit to attempting to manually buzz pollinate the flowers. I have more aborted flowers than usual, but do not know if it is fewer bees servicing them or something else.

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  5. Such weather is normal here, which is why we should not bother with the fancy sort of Clematis. ‘Etoile Violette’ happens to be one that can perform reasonably well here, and should be more popular than other types.

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  6. The weather world is a crazy place at the moment, actually, it is all a bit bonkers! Your allium is a beauty, I love it. Good old daylilies for being as tough as they are cheery. I wish you rain in the very near future, but not too much!

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  7. Oh yeah, I would have thought the tithonias were more heat-resistant than that. They’ve done well in my garden for several years and are quite tall, but maybe there’s enough moisture in the soil and cooler nights. Nice shots of alliums

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  8. Sometimes we are in a rain doughnut hole like that, it’s frustrating. But it certainly makes you appreciate mulch and daylilies. The rabbits are going crazy here, too. We have been wondering where the bobcats and foxes are.

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  10. The Alliums are lovely Chris. And I know exactly what you mean about crispy leaves and brown dried up buds…. hope you get some rain soon! We had a little, but the garden didn’t really benefit much. Maybe the grass looks a little less brown – what’s left of it! LOL! (Oh, and my Tithonia are about six inches tall and not flowering yet….)

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  11. You could have been describing our weather at the beginning of your post, we are just not used to so much hot dry weather, thank goodness for my heavy clay which hangs onto moisture! Day lilies say “drought, what drought” and carry on as usual, if anything they have been better than ever this year. Hope you get some much needed rain, ours arrived last night, but no thunder which was forecast, thank goodness!

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    1. I was up when the storms pass thru early this morning…left about a half inch of water. Not enough to refill the rain barrels/cubes but very welcome nonetheless!

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