Hot stuff...
Oops - it's been just too hot for me to do much gardening work. Thirty degree days for nearly a week. Hmm... Being an English rose, fair and lightly freckled, this strength of summer sun is rather difficult, even with my skin sticky with sunblock.
Eschscholzia
Hot bees...
The hot weather seems to have made the buzzy things buzzier - and faster? More desperate? Bumble bees charge in and out of the the last foxglove flowers, while the slim-line honey bees zoom over the clover flowers in the lawn. Maybe the pollen is running out in the heat?
I've had my little hoses on, dribbling water to needy roses, trees, and the like. I top up any plants which don't get irrigated with buckets of sploshy water - very satisfying, this, a return to the roots of non-tech gardening. But I worry that I'm missing some. The big whoosy irrigation runs three or four nights each week. The David Austin rose Lady of Megginch (close to a sprinkler) has no chance, and is now covered in huge, drooping, balled flower-heads. What a waste of a beautiful cherry-pink! Oh well, there's always the repeat season in autumn...
Before my eyes other roses are wilting in the heat, petals dropping. Underfoot, the irrigated lawns are dreadfully long and shockingly weedy, too, with the healthiest crop of dandelions. The mower is broken.
Poor Frisbee Lawn!
But the Frisbee Lawn, where (naturally) the dogs chase and catch their frisbees, is in the saddest state. Its grass is dry and crackling, ginger-brown in colour, and waves of heat (smelling like cooked hay) waft up from its surface. We need rain. Good, well-directed, gentle rain. There's been almost none for six weeks now. That's a long time for my garden to go without. I hope nothing dies on me. There's only so much water bucketing a girl can do...
Sad Frisbee Lawn
So it seems that I haven't been in the garden properly for ages. And each day I notice more and more areas in distress, gardenwise. The Hen House Garden is 'awash' (I wish!) with fallen gum tree leaves. The Iceberg roses, large shrubs, are almost all ready for dead-heading. I grow a lot of the coloured varieties - 'Brilliant Pink, Burgundy, Blushing Pink'. The heat has accelerated the demise of their flowers.
As far as photographs go, the sun has been too glaringly bright to get many up-to-date pictures. Selfies of an old, sweaty, pink-faced person are definitely not appropriate, and I'm certainly not going to show you anything that's suffering. But the daylilies are gorgeous. They love the heat. And the tomatoes in their patio pots are growing a treat. Yeay! Maybe this is the summer of the tomato...
The heat brings noisy swarms of country blowflies into the house, through the doors and windows (I can't help myself - I love an open house, so to speak). They all waft up into the stairwell, overcook themselves, and expire of heat stroke. Serve them right! But the black speckled carpet is indelicately shocking for anyone wandering upstairs. It fascinates the grand toddler, who spends ages collecting the corpses oh so carefully in his hands. Ooops. Out comes the little portable dust buster, and please don't tell your mother...
Good dog news
There is good dog news. The dogs haven't dropped their frisbees in the pond yet (their 'dogobies' don't float). My semi-sturdy me-built boundary fence seems to be deterring them from 'visiting' the neighbours. And one of my singing friends is giving me his spare fence posts - yeay! I can extend the fence towards the road. But no digging post holes until the temperatures drop back to normal.
Joy to the World...
Joy! Finally the lawn mower is fixed. Scruffy calf-high paddocks (AKA lawns) make my garden borders look even messier than they actually are. Drizzle, lower temperatures, and even rain are forecast for tomorrow, when we (New Zealand) will certainly win the cricket test. A reprieve! And I can get back (slowly) to doing what I love. It's going to rain tomorrow. Joy to my world...