Anyone who gardens in the American south or mid-Atlantic regions understands the degree of tenacity and grit required to enjoy the work during our summers. It is all too easy to give up and stay indoors where it is a bit more comfortable and certainly cleaner. Some days one must pluck up one’s courage and set one’s resolve to go outside.

Not that there is much of a choice, sometimes, particularly when there is a visiting deer to chase away from the garden buffet. And lots of folks happily go outside to spend hours under the broiling sun on a beach, or on a sports field, without even accomplishing a bit of watering or weeding while they are out. There is more than politics that divides neighbor from neighbor in these times- it is also our tolerance to broiling and basting in the sun.

My daughter sent me an animated clip this week called, ‘The sun is a deadly laser.’ It showed a simple childlike drawing of a home with the smiling sun shining in the sky. And then the sun frowns, and shoots a laser at the house, vaporizing it into a cloud of black dust. Her daughter found it online, and has been chanting ‘The sun is a deadly laser’ whenever there is talk about going outside to play. It might be funny if the sun weren’t near solar maximum, and if a sunny afternoon didn’t feel so piercing here these days.

My solution has been to get up and out early enough to water at sunrise. We have been fortunate to have some cool, misty mornings, and we’ve finally had some good rain this week. So I have concentrated on watering the hanging baskets on our back deck and cleaning up loose ends with various garden projects. The tenacity and will to live that plants demonstrate always strengthens my own resolve.

I just found a forgotten pot left neglected under something in the garage, while I was sweeping up. It had shown no sign of life for months and so was set aside as I moved more promising plants outdoors in late May or early June. And there were its long, light starved leaves reaching out from the shadows this morning, begging for better treatment. As I had suspected, there was a Zantedeschia tuber in the pot. But there was also a bit of a cactus growing from a leaf I’d gathered in early spring and casually thrown on top of the soil. Now watered and moved to a brighter spot, I have hopes for both plants to produce something lovely this summer.

I found a little chewed and desiccated Portulaca pulled from its pot and left to wither on the patio on Tuesday. Whether the work of rabbit or deer, it had taken me a day to find and rescue it. Something has been eating the Portulaca this summer and I should have moved the pot out of harm’s way weeks ago, instead of just spraying it with repellents. I had already moved another to the back deck, after it was grazed. I plunged this one into a jar of water until it showed signs of life, and then replanted it into a new pot indoors. Once it begins to grow again it will join the others on the deck, safely out of reach.

The Alocasias, Colocasias, and Caladiums I have been moving back outside are responding quickly to the warmth and better light. A new shipment of Caladiums arrived yesterday, ones with broad, white leaves, which will fill in a few of the last empty spots in containers. It was too steamy this morning to tempt me outside to plant them, so I planted them in a flat in the basement to awaken and begin to root. Those Caladiums opening new leaves this month look cool and vibrant on even the hottest day. They love the heat and humidity of a Virginia summer.

Our back deck remains shaded until around 10:30 each morning, and it is where I have been growing baby fern sporelings. It can take a very long time for ferns to grow from spores into ferns large enough to transplant, and I have them at all stages right now. I found time to dig into my sporeling boxes for the first time in several months and found a few ferns ready to move out of the clear plastic box where they have been growing, and into unprotected shade. A few newly developing ferns went from the growing medium and into pots for the first time.

There are also seedlings and cuttings growing in the shade, many with baby ferns growing under them. And this is also a good spot to protect Begonias and baby trees from the deer. It is more nursery than staged collection, but remains endlessly interesting as the plants develop.

A hummingbird visits the deck to feed and has grown more tolerant of us when we are out there. He used to fly off when he saw us on the deck, but now will visit the feeder if we aren’t too close to it. This is a perfect spot for watching bees and butterflies visiting the rose of Sharon shrubs and for listening to the birds. A green dragonfly sometimes visits, too, and we have been very happy to find clouds of baby dragonflies hovering near our pots on the front patio. The garden is alive with movement.

We expect more rain over the next few days. That will be a blessing, because no amount of watering from a hose can make up our rain deficit at this point. On Thursday morning, I was trying to plant the last things left in nursery pots. I took a cart full of plants to our upper garden along with several shovels, extra potting soil and some Perma-till. The Lantana still in small nursery pots ended up going into existing containers because when I tried to dig in the ground, the shovel simply bounced back off our hard and dried clay soil. Plants in the larger containers found places in the shade of more established plants, their containers simply topped off with soil and mulched with Perma-till. I will hope to actually plant them in the ground once it softens again later next week. Or maybe I will wait until autumn, when they will have a better chance, anyway.

The first week of July brings great beauty along with the challenges of working around the weather. There is a lot more to enjoy before the cooler days of autumn signal the end of another productive summer.

With appreciation to Jim Stephens of Garden Ruminations, who

hosts Six on Saturday each week.

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