Sunday, August 15, 2010

Crispy Critters (Day 21)

After talking about my flowers the other day looking like crispy bits of a brown paper bag, I thought I would take some after pictures. And by after, I mean after 21 days of triple digit temperatures. I didn't take any pictures of all of the fried plants, because I don't have before pictures of all of them.
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The picture below shows my before of the mixed pot of calibrachoa. It was a mix of dark blue. tangerine and scarlet (their words, not mine and by their I mean the folks that printed the plastic description thing that comes with the plant) next to the after picture: The funny thing is, that dude is actually making a comeback. It looked worse than that a week ago. I moved it to a shadier spot that might also pick up some extra water from the yard sprinklers. And that petunia in the turtle? Not only has that been dead for a while but one of the poor turtle legs died and broke off from heat exhaustion. I can fix it with Gorilla Glue, but that's right! ding! ding! ding! It's too hot to do that right now. And for some reason I am amused that I will fix a turtle's leg with Gorilla Glue. Gorillas and turtles. Oh and I was not compensated for mentioning and linking to that glue because I don't even know how to do that. I just think its a good product.
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These next pictures are really sad. These were my petunias and that unknown plant that even my blog readers could not help me with. We'll call the unknown plant Ralph.
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In the before picture Ralph is on the bottom and the purplish petunia is on the top and they are switched in the after picture.:

As you can see if you look at the top right, Ralph is still okay. Ralph has like a bottom cabbage growth after a time and then I cut away all the tall stuff and he starts all over. That happened last year too. Plus, Ralph lived through our record breaking frigid winter and crazy snows we had last year. Ralph is TOUGH! The petunias, not so much. And that's not even a good rendition of the yellow petunia. It was huge and gorgeous before the mad heat.
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I just checked and it's supposed to be 104° today (Sunday, I mean even though I'm still Saturday night until I go to bed). I'll try to stay indoors as much as possible so I don't end up like my plants. Who wants to look like crispy bits of a brown paper bag?

9 comments:

Jazz said...

Maybe next year you should nix the "up north where it rains and is cold" plants and go for native Texas cacti... I love cacti, they're the bitch of the plant kingdom. Gotta love that in a plant.

geewits said...

Jazz,
~~I do not like cacti. I like flowers. Not every summer has 20 something days of triple digits and the ones they sell here are usually pretty hardy. I'll keep watering them until they die and then a month before the wedding guests are due to arrive I'll start all over with nice fresh flowers. Triple digit tempertures are rough!

Anonymous said...

I was hoping for some before and after pictures of you as well!

Ian Lidster said...

Actually it's been inordinately hot and dry here and some of our plants have suffered the same fates. Not 104 here, but only 10 degrees cooler than that so the impact is much the same.

geewits said...

Xup,
~~No change. I actually start losing my tan this time of year but get it back in September.

Ian
~~I imagine in your part of the world that 94° is really shocking to plants.

Lolo said...

Our poor plants!!!!

Ileana said...

Wow, that's crazy heat and I feel bad for your poor plants! Btw, I think it's hilarious that you named your plant, Ralph (or just that you named your plant). :D

Gorilla Glue is a product I think my husband would love. I'll have to pass him the link.

Stay cool, Chica!!

geewits said...

Lo,
~~It's sad.

Ily,
~~I name EVERYTHING!

VioletSky said...

I was surprised that not all of my plants died while I was away, since I forgot to tell my neighbout to water them when she watered the cat. I have 3 left of the original 8.