The high humidity has all of our 50-year-old apple and crabapple trees behaving badly. The leaves are turning yellow, getting ugly fungal spots and prematurely dropping. They are falling on the Moss Garden and the Moon Garden where they are not only unsightly but can easily smother the moss and the all the dwarf plants in the Moon Garden. It's so dry that blowing them off the moss will blow the moss off, too. So clean-up is an almost daily task of hand work.
Any number of critters — squirrels, racoons, who knows what — are digging ever deeper in the dry soil looking for grubs to eat. The are scattering mulch to the four winds, ripping up moss in big sheets and now, for the first time ever, they are ripping out the German iris. Usually by this point in the season, I prune the iris by literally pulling out handfuls of leaves and roots. I keep the plants in scale and can easily check for fungal problems and root rot. Maybe there are problems I've not seen that are attracting the critters. Another question and another chore to add to the July list.
I love Japanese painted fern and have it throughout the garden. It is growing in so many locations that I am currently able to look at the clumps like a science project and quickly determine the moisture content of the soil. A number of large clumps in the shade have laid down flat due to dryness. That has to be the case since this clump in full afternoon sun is lushly standing. It has had a bit more watering than other areas that are further from any hoses. But the real difference here is soil. It is planted in great soil with few large trees nearby. The floppy ones are under huge old trees where any moisture is quickly sucked up by the trees. If we're having an inch of rain per week, everybody is happy. But we're getting more like a quarter or half an inch of rain per week and the ferns are sulking. Lots of rain in the forecast for the last week but it's always described as "isolated showers," and mostly we seem to be isolated from them.
