I COULD BARELY WAIT

I had been gone from home for over a month and could barely wait for dawn. I needed to get outside to see what my garden looked like. We were supposed to be home in daylight but a medical emergency of one of the passengers on our Heathrow to Austin flight was cause for our plane to turn around over the Atlantic and fly back to the closest airport-Glasgow. We arrived home in the dark.
I had already been forewarned by my neighbors that things were brown and the stock tanks were very low and I knew what that meant. Those plants like iris and papyrus sitting up high would be toast. Hopefully the water lilies would be OK.

This is the stock tank in the side entry which is in shade for most of the day. The water level was down from 2' to 8" but all the plants were still alive thanks to my floating islands. The only loss was the pump which was high and dry and had burnt itself out.  
I filled up the tank from the rain water barrel and after 24 hours things were looking better. I am so glad I put division of the Colorado water lily in here because I think I may have lost the one in the larger stock tank.

Not such a welcome sight at the other tanks. The small tank had no water in it at all and the larger one was down to 10" I quickly filled it up but don't hold out too much hope for these plants.

I filled up the larger tank and removed all the dead material from the surface. I wonder if that hint of green will mean that there is still life in the iris.

And the papyrus.

The native water lily had already put out new leaves by morning. Now it is time to spruce up the floating plants and wait and see what happens.

There is little of value left in the vegetable garden. Just a couple of peppers and eggplant to nurse back in the hope of a few late summer vegs. There is much work to do in all parts of the garden; dead and dying plants but the worst shock came in the bathroom garden. The pittosporums were burn to a crisp. This one really hurts.

They have been there for the life of the garden and have seen some terrible summers. What happened? When David investigated the sprinklers he discovered that it was human error. The box had been reprogrammed but never set! Neither this garden nor the English garden received any water for a month. Not sure if the plants will make a comeback but I have too much to do to worry about them at the moment.