Scratching My Itch

There's no other excuse for my dropping $50 at Sprouts for five absolutely stunning but utterly inappropriate 5 gallon pots of mums.

The first thing the label told me was how much they really don't like hot weather.  Did I mention that it's going up into the triple digits again this week?

My zinnias are thriving in the containers which would normally house fall blooms, if it felt anything like fall.  It may be just a couple of weeks from the change of seasons, but here the drama is the occasional day in the 90's.  

We do no leaf peeping here in the desert. 

The migrating birds seem to be hanging out a little longer, the quail babies are a little later in appearing, but I'm still not doing much of anything outdoors after 9am.  

But Little Cuter has been talking about buying her seasonal mums and my news feed can't resist tempting me so when I went into Sprouts and saw those beauties begging me to take them home and make them mine I was powerless to refuse.  

Of course, with summer blooms still blooming in the pots that were to receive them, I had a problem.  In addition to not loving the heat, they enjoy an evenly moist soil.  

Moist is not a word we use very often in the desert. 

I spent far too long moving the newbies around, comparing and contrasting, shifting and lifting, and then realizing that all six of us were wilting from the heat.  I placed each one, still in its pot, at the receiving end of an emitter that was already watering a container.  

It's not gorgeous, but it will get the job done.  I'll take pictures once they look as good as they should.