Now at this part of this particular summer you find my disenchantment… in my garden. No matter how much I spray for deer because we have over-developed so much where I live, I just can’t deal with the deer this year. They need to do a cull.

Then there was my baby emperor oak that was crushed by accident when we had trees taken down. That baby was replaced by another baby whom the drought has just pretty much gotten. I won’t know for sure until next year.

Also maybe a drought victim a Wintonbury Franklinia I treated myself to from Broken Arrow Nursery in Connecticut. I have been watering her diligently because of the drought and I forgot to yesterday and I came out this morning and all was not well. I don’t know if she’ll make it.

There are lots of plants I am resigned to not making it. And a lot of cases they’re just not right for this garden and I think it’s nature’s way of taking them out. But there are handful of plants that I don’t want to lose.

There are a lot of things that have been surprisingly tough with this weather and then there are things. I just don’t see this year.

Next, we have the things that we’re eaten like a lot of my lily bulbs over the winter. I have to replant so many.

I lost five rose bushes to a combination of voles and winter. And for the record I winter protect my roses. I put leaves and stuff around the base of the roses up 6 or 8 inches.

And then there’s something else that just bothers me and it’s human. There is a woman who walks every day up and down our street. Up and down our street every day. Every day I wave (not hailing a cab, just a little greeting) and say hi. I’m not looking for some giant conversation, I’m just saying hello and some days she literally looks right through me like I’m invincible. It might sound silly, but it’s hurtful.

If you see someone in their garden working and they smile at you or they raise a hand to kind of say hi, what does it hurt to say hi back? Are human beings so narcissistic or self-focused that we can forgo basic pleasantries? Again, someone waving or smiling at you as you go by isn’t interrupting your precious space of “me time.”

This morning I hid in one of my bushes. I didn’t have it in me to try to be nice one more time. I also didn’t want to call out and say something like “imagine if you said hello once?”

I think that’s why I like a lot of gardeners. They’re just so friendly. They want to say hello to you. They’re interested in what you’re planting. They love that you’re interested in what they are planting. It’s a wonderful community.

There are some exceptions to this however. Some of the folks who are members of the Penn State Master Gardeners around my neck of woods. They are elitist and unfriendly.

But in the midst of all the things that I’m worried about drought taking, I did find beauty. I found lilies that someone hadn’t eaten over the winter. oh and if the lilies did come up this year, some of the deer were just eating them if they weren’t too tall for them to reach.

It’s a very frustrating year to be a gardener. I’m also starting to get frustrated because now that I’m into my 60s I can’t do everything at the same pace I used to be able to. And there are things I just need help with and it’s really getting hard to find people that will show up when they say they’re going to or help you at all. And I am not looking for free help.

Over the years because I have a big garden I have had people just show up and shake their head and leave when I ask them to come out and bid business.

I still do most of it myself, but there’s just some I can’t do. Like the giant tall azalea bush out front. It’s had 50 years to get itself well rooted, and it grows like a fiend every year.

And then there were the people in years past more than a decade at this point who said they knew what they were doing and pulled up my white current bushes. I can’t even explain what it felt like when I walked by and realized they were gone. I mean, they were fruiting. If you’re doing garden work for someone and you see something that’s literally a bush and it’s fruiting, wouldn’t you ask the person you’re working for before you just yanked it out?

And the bugs this year and critters hunting them. We are in the middle of resealing our deck and it was just power washed. Our woodpeckers have been hunting.

Oh, and yes, I did place a couple of orders for fall. More heirloom daffodils and oriental and Asiatic lilies. I make no secret of my preference for heirloom varieties of plants when I can get them. And it’s not just because of their beauty and the fact that they’re interesting, I am discovering in our unending experiences with climate change and drought that they’re more hardy. These older cultivars just have this innate toughness about them. And I guess that makes sense when you’re looking at a daffodil bulb that’s been around since the 1600s.

I also ordered some additional azalea and rhododendrons. I am also on the hunt for a couple of witch hazels in particular. and that of course happens every time I go to my friend Jenny Rose Carey‘s garden. I had one friend Catherine, who introduced me to witch hazels years ago, but Jenny Rose opened my eyes to the different varieties of witch hazel. What I’m actually hunting for, and it didn’t used to be so hard to find is Hamamelis virginiana ‘Winter Champagne.

The thing about witch hazel is they are also sturdy and tough. And deer don’t eat them. over the past few years I have been ringing the transition areas from woodland and shade beds to the woods with them. I also want more serviceberry.

And finally I want to put a plug in for sale plants from good sources. About a decade ago I planted some really small sale hydrangeas. They were maybe 24 inches tall. Just little sticks by fall when I bought them. Well they are the last photo in this post.

So in the midst of my current gardening disenchantment, there is always hope.