The gardens have looked better. Actually, a month ago they looked a whole lot better than they do now. Perhaps it's not the gardens themselves, they look bright and luxurious. It's the hanging baskets. Not the various garden pots and urns, their floral offerings appear as brilliantly evanescent as always. The hanging baskets, though, absolutely not.

They looked utterly peaked, stressed, incapable of producing much any longer in the way of flowers. They've become downright gangly, miserable looking, despite being cut back carefully to allow for new growth. Hanging baskets require frequent watering, they dry out quickly, and have to be kept hydrated or they'll shrivel and disappear.

To be honest, many of the plentiful annuals that should bloom throughout the summer months which were planted as well in the gardens have also now disappeared; few are still left from the various times that I set about putting them into little open garden places here and there. Those that are left are shrivelled and painful looking. The trouble clearly is too much water.

And, since that plentiful watering source up in the sky has overdone itself this spring and summer there's little we can do about it. Even the large old pine on the front lawn -- not the spruces and other trees yet, thank heavens, just the pine -- has begun to drop its needles at a ferocious rate, along with its cones. One central branch has died back, and the tree, once so robust and evenly green now looks as though it is slowly dying.

The rains seem ceaseless this year. This morning we had a very heavy downpour and it lasted quite awhile. The thing about these rain events even while they're ubiquitous throughout the summer months and seem to last virtually forever, is that they're followed by plenty of clear skies and sun beaming down. You'd think these would be ideal circumstances; lots of water, lots of sun.

But the soil hardly has the opportunity to absorb the rain that comes down in virtual buckets before another onslaught begins.