Area's Aridity Rises To Level of Drought

Many farmers and gardeners, however, have been calling this a drought for weeks.

At Scenic View Orchards north of Thurmont, the ears of sweet corn are smaller than usual and a patch of beans emerged hollow due to the dry weather, said Betty Calimer, a part-owner of the business.

"The ears would have been a lot larger if we'd had rain," she said. "In the late summer when it was so dry, we didn't replant [a second crop] because we knew the seeds wouldn't come up."

The National Arboretum in Northeast Washington is allowing the grass to lie dormant. That turns it an unsightly brown, but it should revitalize with the first significant rainfall, said horticulturist Carol Bordelon. The other plantings are being irrigated heavily.

"We recommend giving plants a deep, infrequent watering, instead of short periods," she said. "Just turn on the sprinkler for a couple hours. Otherwise, the trees will absorb all the water."

The plantings are a deep, lush green at Betty's Azalea Ranch in Fairfax, thanks to four wells and 250 water heads, as well as six full-time employees whose sole responsibility is to hand-water the 16 acres of plants, longtime owner Steve Cockerham said. Employees might die but the plants are not allowed to, he tells them semi-jokingly.

"This is probably about the driest fall I've ever seen," said Cockerham as he strolled past hundreds of pots of azaleas being showered with drops from a rotating water head.

Many homeowners do not realize how much water their new plantings need.

"Almost all our plant returns are for lack of water," he said. "And they all say they have watered the plants constantly, while they're standing beside a plant that looks like it came out of the microwave."

Most of Cockerham's customers are determined to have a lawn worthy of their neighbors' envy, no matter how much watering it requires.

If they slack off, flowers that bloom in springtime will be noticeably sparser.

"There'll be stuff missing, particularly on younger plants," he said. "Older plants can overcome it, but they won't bloom quite as profusely."

Rain clouds, however, might be on the horizon. The National Weather Service is predicting rain for Monday and Tuesday.

"And with all the Farmers' Almanac predictions, it might get real wet," said McIntyre of the Maryland Department of the Environment. "Now if we could just get the almanac to predict lower gas prices."