Drought

Drought. A word to strike fear in any gardener's heart, and especially in the heart of one who has acres of woods and loves ferns.

We haven't had any real rain since early in May. The woods are crisp-dry, which, combined with all the trees down after the wind storm a few weeks ago, brings to mind another word, even scarier than the word 'drought' and that word is 'fire'. Pine Ridge is a rocky ridge, with very little soil, and other than the beaver pond and the marsh, it is very quick to dry out.

The drought in 2012 did a lot of damage, particularly in the soil, and I was just starting to see some signs of recovery. Before 2012 there were Grape Ferns and Mushrooms and Indian Pipe plants... after 2012, there were none of these. The Botrychiums, the Mushrooms and the Indian Pipes all depend on in-soil mycorrhizal fungi, and I believe the drought decimated these. I was hoping they would recover and that new Grape Ferns and such would develop. The fern spores at least would still be around and would grow again. That's why this spring I was happy to see a few new Rattlesnake Ferns, small but coming, and a few of those small red mushrooms.

Sadly, the ferns have withered, and I haven't seen any more mushrooms. Rosie and I just went to a long walk in the woods (actually more a climb over/duck under, push-through-branches kind of a scramble) and we didn't find any. To add insult to injury, the ticks, which are supposed to be busy with other things in July, were out in force. I picked several off my pant legs, and one off my hand where it was scouting for a good drilling site.

 I guess I'm feeling worse about the current dryness because I was hopeful that things were getting back to normal. Isn't that what we gardeners do? We're always convinced: 'next year will be better': next year the wind won't smash down all the Bearded Iris, next year the Roses will bloom for the garden tour, next year the resident Bear won't eat all the strawberries, plants and all, next year it will rain... but sometimes the spirit flags and a feeling of defeat sets in.


On the up-side, I have about 6 Monarch Butterflies wafting around the garden, there seem to be heaps of birds, including a comical family of 4 young Eastern Phoebes which swoop through the Studio and back out making twittering noises the whole time, and there's a small flower bud on one of my hardy cacti.

And it might rain. Maybe.