It’s too hot to write a blog post

 

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.  I’m certainly sticking to everything else—the chair, where my wrists rest on the bottom of the keyboard, the sole of one foot on the floor, the other one is in a mutual stickfest with my opposite leg*, my own hair**. . . .

Angelia

the most popular [bird feeder] is one of the suet blocks

I’m surprised it isn’t melted into a puddle under the feeder!

Nearly.  I had to put a new one in today and I had to SPOON IT IN because it had half-melted.  And it’s been indoors.

B_twin

We sometimes run an empty 95C as a short “cleansing” wash after a particularly nasty load [in the washing machine]…

NINETY FIVE?  I’m so jealous.  After ordinary hellcritter bedding duty I run one sixty-degree empty wash and then rake handfuls of fur out of the filter since this (German) machine does have a filter***.  After extraordinary hellcritter-with-problems bedding duty I run two sixty-degree empty washes, one with DETERGENT and one without.

PamAdams

I was on an Arctic/Antarctic reading kick lately- entirely this blog’s fault, as the mention of Francis Spufford led to his Antarctic books, and then to those of other writers.

Ooooh, you could do a BOOK REVIEW GUEST BLOG.  Who did you read?  Marie Herbert?  Sara Wheeler?  Some of the old guys?  (Surely I mentioned Spufford’s I May Be Some Time, one of my favourites?)  This is probably the weather for revisiting polar classics. . . .

Quill

†† Hellterror was at the cottage, snarking in her crate. As she bears down on her first year birthday she is unmistakably showing signs of responsibility and righteousness . . . but not very many and they don’t string together well.

††† She has an excuse: she’s been laid up with a bell-rope-antipathetic injury. Usually she rings better than I do. Sigh.

I read this at first as the hellterror ringing better. I’m sure she’d ring with enthusiasm and dispatch . . .

Ahem.  Anyone who doesn’t read individual footnotes in their individual contexts but merely in a wodge at the end of the page can expect to be confused and only has herself to blame.

Maren

. . . Duke, a very sweet dog but an avid collector of dead things.  The best way to get them away from him was to bring him home with the dead thing in his mouth and turn the hose on him.

This would only encourage the hellterror.  She’s spending kind of a lot of her time damp anyway since she has no clue that she should maybe SLOW DOWN in this heat.  When I bring her indoors she’s panting hard enough to cause brain damage so I douse her, which, as I say, she thinks is an excellent game and I wouldn’t put it past her to start plotting other ways to make me perform.   —Also, she’d’ve swallowed by then.

Aaaaand on a different note, now you know why I gave up on container gardening on my unshaded west-facing balcony with no spigot. The single daylily is still doing well left to its own devices, but I can’t even have the drapes open to look at it during the summer because it’s too hot.

Oh, now, don’t tease me like this.  If you’ve only got a balcony you can fuss.  You can line your pots—this is working a treat with a big heavy terra cotta pot out front that clearly missed its calling as a pizza oven—and you can use about half compost and half water-retaining crystals or gel or whatever’s on offer at your garden centre and/or put a reservoir in the bottom.  And mulch, of course, although I wouldn’t waste time with ice cubes.  I wouldn’t try pansies or sweet peas both of which will frelling mildew on you even if you water twice a day† but yes you could grow roses. 

Katinseattle

There was the time my husband and I were eating at friends of his. Their little girl told a funny story about how once after daddy picked lettuce for supper, they found a slug in the salad. We all laughed a little. I covertly checked my plate.

Dickinson family mythology declares that—this was before my time—Peter’s eldest son in law and eldest grandchild have not let a green vegetable pass their lips since they were served broccoli with added protein from Peter’s garden.  Hey it was cooked and everything, I don’t see the problem.

And for all of you who have suggested that I be glad I didn’t find half a large slug in my salad . . . that’s not really how you eat salad.  The line works a lot better about half a worm in your apple, which I why I cut my apples up before eating, because yes, I eat organic apples, and the occasional worm is part of the package.  What helps keep me awake at night is wondering how many tiny slugs I have eaten . . . unknowingly, obviously, and raw, in my salad.  This does not bear a lot of thinking about.

EMoon

Dead mouse in Pav’s mouth…slug in salad…not the best of days. You surely do deserve that bottle of champagne.

Thank you.  I so agree.  And all I’ve had from Peter is the assurance that he washed today’s lettuce VERY CAREFULLY.  That’s fine for today.  But I am suffering trauma and post traumatic shock.  I need MORE than merely slug-free salad, although I admit it’s an important step in the right direction.

Ringlets

I’d say it’s worth the bottle of champagne and the jewellery!!

My husband reads the blog.  I hope he is paying attention.  I am a poor broken woman.  I need help. 

Shalea

I’ve lived in a fairly hot climate for most of my life and still Don’t Do Heat. My coping mechanisms involve, mostly, being too stubborn to acknowledge this until I’m forced to by general physical rebellion. For example, I spent some time yesterday wrestling with the root ball of a boxwood I was trying to evict, and then spent a comparable amount of time lying on the vinyl kitchen floor in front of an aircon vent

I stopped reading as soon as I got to ‘aircon vent’.

Diane in MN

My flowers are about the only thing I really like about summer, so I’m sure I’ll be out with the hose. I will not feel holy and connected to Life and Nature. Are you sure your vicar is from this planet?            

I often wonder about this.  But I am the opinion that either introverts or extraverts are from a different planet, so that means one of us is.

EMoon

I grew up in a hot climate, and when I moved back to one, it didn’t take long to readjust.

Age, however, has soured the relationship between me and 100F. . . the age effect on temperature regulation has taken off capacity at both ends. I can’t handle big heat as well, and I also get colder in cold. I can, on a dry day, ride the bike up to the post office and back when it’s 95F . . . . But any attempt at serious work outside…no. I’ve actually had some on-the-edge-of-serious heat problems in the past ten years….it’s galling that I used to play tennis in the middle of the day–our tennis class was at 1 pm–in 100F. Of course, I was 17-18, skinny as a rail, and had grown up there and none of the schools then had AC. There was usually one fan in the room pointed at the teacher.

I’ve always been terrible with heat and I can’t get any worse about cold.  But this muggy English heat always reminds me of being a kid in Tokyo—now there’s muggy heat for you.  I used to spend the days at the library which was AIR CONDITIONED.  But the nights were seriously bad—my parents had one room-sized window air conditioner, and it was in their bedroom.  And I so remember the last weeks of school—with the one fan in the room pointed at the teacher.

Okay, it’s cool enough to hurtle. Half-hurtle anyway.  Last night there was an actual breeze so I sat in the kitchen at the cottage for way too long with the doors open letting the house cool down, like a doused hellterror.  With all the lights off so I didn’t attract the local bug population and possibly a few bats and an owl.  I realise reading your iPad in the dark isn’t good for your eyes but it’s not like I’m planning on needing to do a lot of it and it was a boon last night . . . and will probably be a boon again tonight.  And maybe tomorrow night if the breeze keeps blowing . . . .

* * *

* Yes of course I’m wearing shorts.  I was watering in shorts again today.  I had been changing into jeans to do the watering but I think I might die.  So I hope whatever I’m allergic to out there doesn’t kill me instead.

** WHY DON’T I GET IT CUT AGAIN?  There’s not enough of it left to have it this long.  With reference to menopause:  not everyone loses 95% of their hay fever, ditto their banquet status with mozzies and other evil biters—but not everyone loses most of their hair either.  I hate this a lot.  It’s apparently pretty common, but I don’t notice it being talked about much.  But I had long hair for over forty years and it’s a hard habit to give up, especially since I equally detest having people messing with my hair.  So I have long hair again because nobody gets near me with a pair of scissors.

*** Even if the design is stupid and insane.

† Mildew is counter-intuitively a plant disease of drought, not drowning