Hi, this is Deborah. I have a pocket-sized garden in East Arlington and I'm grateful to Alan for letting me join this blog.
Not much happening in my garden this time of year; mostly it's the fall crop of yellow raspberries; always a lovely harvest. My tomatoes ended early, so there'll be no green tomato pie. My late peas got planted too late, so unless we have another unending fall like last year's, they'll be eaten as pea tendrils before frost -- but my early peas are still producing, and even flowering! At least, they are a little. One of my strawberries beds took a beating in the August drought, and the everbearings I hung in baskets did miserably. Maybe I can build them a bed before frost? My soil here is very leady, so I don't like planting food outside of raised beds.
My main concern is giving enough water to the periwinkle I've planted on the side of my garden devestated by that evilest of all trees which the Town of Arlington has bequeathed us. It's the only thing we water from sprinklers; everything else we have can be watered from rain barrels, but we've now had two entire summers where the periwinkle won't take and maybe excessive watering will help.
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Deborah, you're so right that periwinkle (vinca) seems to need an outrageous amount of water when it's under one o' those %^$&*^(*& maples to get established. I had a lovely bed of it underneath our mammoth NM in Arlington, but one bad winter it was really blasted by cold and I never did get it really reestablished before I moved.
One thing you might try is chopping through the NM surface roots with a sharp shovel a couple times a year. I had great success with a small azalea my mother had naively planted under that tree many years ago. It hadn't bloomed in a very, very long time, but after I diligently cut a circle around it through the NM roots a couple of times (and gave it some acid fertilizer), it bloomed beautifully, and the vinca inside that circle perked up considerably, as well.
Once the vinca gets established, it doesn't seem to need any extra water or other attention even under a Devil Tree, but getting it to that point is another thing entirely.
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