Well, poo. I just wrote a long, elaborate post about the rain garden and it got deleted by accident. That stinks.

As I was saying… Our rain garden is now in its fourth summer, a season it doesn’t like much. Summer is hot, dry, and sunny, all things not much beloved of native Washington plants. Many of the ferns suffer quite a bit, barely surviving. They need more cool shade, being understory plants.

The below is the last little leafy twig on a much larger, mostly dead plant that got cooked last summer, and is also prey to predation by bunnies.

However, some things have worked out well enough. I planted huckleberries without much expectation of success – they die in captivity often – but one of the two I planted is doing decently well.

I don’t fight all incursions by all weeds; I evaluate and decide whether to let it stay or not. This has really worked out in the grasses department, where all those grasses, sedges, and reeds I put in coexist with wild ones. Aso doing well are the dogwood I planted and a tall, woody, purple-flowering thing that I planted and now don’t know what it is. Anyone who has identification ideas, let me know. Those have both leafed out and provide lovely shade.

Oh, and in the category of plants doing great in this weather, but that aren’t in the rain garden: the honeysuckle. It’s grown from zero to nicely climbing this season, and even has some new flowers. Also, the avocado tree, which has grown at an alarming rate since I put out on the front porch. I have to keep it short enough to bring inside in the winter, potentially a very real challenge given that it’s grown something like 18″ so far this season.