Garden Bloggers Bloom Day September 2011-Flood Edition

The 15th of the month has arrived again and what a month it has been for those in the Northeast.  My heart goes out to all those affected in upstate NY, Vermont, and other areas.  And, for those affected by the Texas (and other) wild fires.

If anyone is wondering where your rain has gone, I can tell you where it is.

Last week, devastating floods hit my area of upstate New York in the United States.  We had already received a lot of rain from the remnants of Hurricane Irene, and that was followed by over 10 inches of rain from Tropical Storm Lee.  It was more rain than our area could cope with. Flash flooding started last Wednesday, followed by river flooding.  Thousands of people were evacuated and some still have not been able to return to their homes.

My house was in one of the evacuated areas.  Thankfully, our damage is a lot less than many of our neighbors.  And, we were out of town at the time so we watched in horror from somewhere an eight hour drive away. 


We returned to our house on September 11.  The flood waters did not enter our yard (although our basement took on two feet of water)- we were on a small island of an otherwise flooded neighborhoood.  Some of our flowers did not survive.  I took pictures that day of what was blooming when we arrived  They are all still in bloom today.  (What is it doing today?  Raining.)

This is the post I made of my pictures.    So this may not be completely within the rules, but these are not good times for the Binghamton/Johnson City/Vestal/Owego, NY area.  So...presenting the Garden Bloggers Bloom Day for September.

Dahlias....and a pot of mounding basil.  The second picture also shows some sedum starting to "pink up".

 Next, garlic chives.

The tag has gone missing and I honestly don't remember what these are!  But I will definitely buy them again next year.

One thing we did discover is that our petunias do not like water.  RIP.

But poinsettias (a plant kept from last Christmas) and avocado (we have an avocado mini-tree in a pot, started years ago from a pit) love tropical storms.  I've never seen them happier. (neither of these can be overwintered outdoors in our zone 5 climate.)  And in our back yard, yellow flowering bleeding hearts are still going strong, but the main plant that gave us September flowers is also RIP.  (this yellow bleeding heart photo is also an earlier photo.)

Rain, rain, go away.  Please come back eventually, but not right now.  So many people need it more than we do.