Thankful for the rain, but...
After what I believe to be about 3/4" (2 cm) rain total over the past two months or so, we finally got a good soaking here in the St. Louis area yesterday. I'm so thankful for the rain...
...but it's not all good news. Heavy downpours and upright ornamental grasses, well, they just don't go together. I had been enjoying the picturesque verticality of my grasses up until yesterday, and now that's gone.
My rain gauge (jam jar) tells me that we got about 3" (7.6 cm) of rain yesterday:
It didn't all come at once either, so the ground had some time to soak most of it up! Yahoo!
It was heavy enough at times though to switch my purple fountain grasses into horizontal mode:
And I don't even want to talk about the Miscanthus 'Silberpfeil' (Silver Arrow), which is huge now:
Luckily it's mostly hidden from view by the maypop vines. I should have dug this out in the spring, but thought I'd give it one more year. Guess who's getting a severe pruning this weekend?
I'll gladly take the rain, but am sad to see the grasses flattened.
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It's a trade off with the generous rains but I suppose the benefits of the soaking far outweighs the temporary flattening of the grasses.
It's not completely temporary though, that's the thing. Some of these will pick themselves up, but others are now permanently flattened, or partially so. Sigh.
I know exactly what you mean...we had heavy rain a few weeks ago and some of the poor grasses were thrashed...luckily, most will recover.
And this is why I dug the huge miscanthus from my front garden a few years ago. I loved it but sure enough every August there would be that one downpour that flattened it, sending it into the sidewalk and the neighbors driveway.
Yay for your rain though.
Loree: which Miscanthus was it? My 'Gracillimus' has never flopped as far as I remember.
So envious! Can you send some rain our way?
I know exactly what you mean about grasses flattened by rain. Our usually recover (probably because it hardly ever rains between May and October, and when it does, it's rarely more than a sprinkle). But your're right, a clump of grass that was pristine before isn't that pristine after a good rain.