Drought

After torrential spring rains this year (2010) we had a summer of virtually no rain. Quite literally, most mowing stopped this summer. The grass turned crunchy and brown by the end of June, and only at the end of August did it start to make a comeback. It's times like this that I appreciate crab grass, the only thing that will come in green after a brief shower. While we are still in very dry conditions for this time of the year, things are better, if only on the surface.

Not knowing what the summer would look like (we've had a number of very wet summers in the past few years) I took advantage of a fantastic sale on trees at the local Big Box store. 4 good sized Linden trees for $11.00 each. Cant pass that up. To date, with much watering through out the summer, the trees seem to have survived. Hopefully they will overwinter well, and will continue to grow next year. Many of our ancient maple trees are not doing well, and they will need replacing eventually. Shade trees are an important ingredient in a beautiful cemetery.

Also perhaps because of the drought, it looks like the fall foliage is starting early. The oaks are already turning yellow, and they are usually the last trees to turn. Some maples are orange already, but those ones are usually the dying maples, which for some reason there are a lot of all around town.

Now would normally be a good time to plant grass seed, but unless the weather changes a bit more and we get some more rain, I'm not sure if this season will be a good one for grass seed. Hopefully next year will be more normal.