Day after day it is hot and dry. Everything that should be green is turning brown. In all of my life, I have never seen it so dry and hot for so long. Yesterday we had a brief shower - just enough to dampen the porch, but the earth and vegetation is so dry that when I walked through the grass immediately after the 2 minute shower, everything was dry. It was like no moisture had fallen at all. I dug up some of my perennials to put them in pots where I can get some water to them to try to save a start of a few of them. I was shocked at the lack of moisture in the earth, and even after digging down about a foot, the soil was bone dry and cracked. No wonder the trees are going brown. Some will die from lack of rain.
The wasps come to the bird bath and drink and drink. The birds come too and sit with their wings out and their feathers fluffed as they pant through open beaks. It is pitiful to see them suffering. I turn on the sprinkler in the evenings to water the garden, and the birds come to sit in the cooling water and preen themselves. So far the well is holding out, but we are more careful with water now.
The garden is still producing a few tomatoes, but everything has stopped flowering. I keep watering hoping that when the 100 plus degree heat finally breaks and the rain returns we might get more vegetables. There are cumulus clouds building in the sky now, but so far no rain in sight. Pray for rain.
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Friday, July 20, 2012
Sweet Talcum
Ladies bathed before noon, after their three o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frosting of sweat and sweet talcum. from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Days and days of 100+ degree weather is wilting the peppers and tomatoes in the garden and has made the yard nothing but a patch of dry, crunching fiber. It wilts me too. The heat is invasive even when I stay inside where the air conditioner moderates the temperature. Somehow, the heat glazes the windows and pokes fingers of blasted air around the doors defying the cool inside.
I try to work in the garden early in the morning when it is relatively cool. By nine or ten o'clock the heat begins to bake everything. I head for the shower drenched is sweat and ready to feel the cool water. When your head is baked by the sun and you've worked outside until the sweat runs down your back and arms, there is nothing like standing under the cool stream of water in the shower. But the best part of a summer shower is the talcum. I might be one of the last people in the world to use talcum; that soft powder on freshly dried skin is a silken coating that defies the heat. Pampered by its slippery smoothness on my parched skin, I think of the ladies of old. Talcum and a cool bath was all the relief they had in the heat of summer. My grandmother used to use big fluffy pad to apply the loose powder to her skin. I remember watching her standing in her slip on a hot day in a cloud of sweet talcum as she moved the puff over arms and neck. My talcum comes in a shaker bottle, but I think back to those wise women who knew how to fight the sticky summer heat and follow their lead with a dousing of sweet talcum on a hot summer day.
Days and days of 100+ degree weather is wilting the peppers and tomatoes in the garden and has made the yard nothing but a patch of dry, crunching fiber. It wilts me too. The heat is invasive even when I stay inside where the air conditioner moderates the temperature. Somehow, the heat glazes the windows and pokes fingers of blasted air around the doors defying the cool inside.
I try to work in the garden early in the morning when it is relatively cool. By nine or ten o'clock the heat begins to bake everything. I head for the shower drenched is sweat and ready to feel the cool water. When your head is baked by the sun and you've worked outside until the sweat runs down your back and arms, there is nothing like standing under the cool stream of water in the shower. But the best part of a summer shower is the talcum. I might be one of the last people in the world to use talcum; that soft powder on freshly dried skin is a silken coating that defies the heat. Pampered by its slippery smoothness on my parched skin, I think of the ladies of old. Talcum and a cool bath was all the relief they had in the heat of summer. My grandmother used to use big fluffy pad to apply the loose powder to her skin. I remember watching her standing in her slip on a hot day in a cloud of sweet talcum as she moved the puff over arms and neck. My talcum comes in a shaker bottle, but I think back to those wise women who knew how to fight the sticky summer heat and follow their lead with a dousing of sweet talcum on a hot summer day.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Too Hot
Everything is wilted. The pink dogwood is badly burned from the heat and the bald cypress tree is going dormant already. If I don't water twice a day, the flowers and vegetables hang limp by the end of the day. This heat is relentless. When a temperature of 95 degrees feels like a cool spell, something is wrong.
I've been reading a book about the Dust Bowl, and it describes years of drought and high temperatures and dust storms. It is a bit scary when I think of the high temperatures and wild fires and drought we are currently experiencing. I buy my meat from a farmer who raises grass fed beef. She said her pasture is almost gone and the springs on her property that have run for two generations are now dry. There are lots of folks who know more about this than I do, but I just wonder if we need to look at how we are using our land and water resources. I continue to water my garden and my shade trees, but I will let the grass go brown. I would rather have my vegetables than a green yard. And I will pray for rain.
I've been reading a book about the Dust Bowl, and it describes years of drought and high temperatures and dust storms. It is a bit scary when I think of the high temperatures and wild fires and drought we are currently experiencing. I buy my meat from a farmer who raises grass fed beef. She said her pasture is almost gone and the springs on her property that have run for two generations are now dry. There are lots of folks who know more about this than I do, but I just wonder if we need to look at how we are using our land and water resources. I continue to water my garden and my shade trees, but I will let the grass go brown. I would rather have my vegetables than a green yard. And I will pray for rain.
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