It’s 75 degrees out there (24 C) and I swear I’m dying…we both are. We decided to have lunch on the patio in the shade of the umbrella, looked over at the beloved hinoki cypress—and saw it dying. Depression.
I headed into the house and got on the internet. Is it too much sun? No. They adore sun. The heat? No. Not at 75. The anti wilt stuff? SOmebody else had used it, and no. Too much water? They adore water. Too little water? The thing’s planted beside a waterfall, for gosh sakes.
And after a hundred articles swearing the hinoki is the easiest of its sort to grow—I found one, just one, that said they really, really, really hate lime in any form. Well, inside the waterfall structure are concrete blocks. This is the second tree we’ve had fail in this position, the first clearly rootbound, but this one wasn’t—I saw those roots myself.
So…in the blazing 75 degree heat, in which I have sweat dripping off my face, down into my eyes, off the end of my nose and Jane swearing up a storm because she loves that tree, too, and she is hurting so bad from the yard work we did yesterday that she can hardly move, the two of us end up balanced on the waterfall berm trying to wrestle a hundred bounds of muddy, prickly, sick tree out of its place, dig up the thriving Austrian pine from an opposing berm and prepare a hole to receive and perhaps treat our ailing baby.
We poured in acidifier, steer manure, and cedar mulch, stirred it up with water, then got the tree moved, and discovered part of our garden drying out. The upside down strawberry container got tossed in a fit of disgust, Jane was black with mud to the elbows, I’m muddy and wet—I have the hose—and no matter what tool we needed, it was in the front yard.
SO…we watered it in. We watered the Austrian pine in. We hope it likes concrete. The rhody from yesterday does not look good. The hinoki is a mess. We are a mess.
We are back indoors now hoping the poor things live.
A taste of hell.
Southern Ca. Aug 2003. It’s 108 in the shade and you are wearing hot itchy nomex from head to toe. Carrying 40 lbs of gear while swinging a heavy pulaski into rocky soil breaking through manzanita brush. And oh yeah, everything around you is on fire so you can hardly get a breath in between coughs.
Climb up in your attic crawlspace on a hot day and roll around in the fiberglass insulation wearing long underwear. It might come close.
Hot is relative. I was up on a ladder yesterday scraping paint in 110 heat index. Soaked through my clothes all the way to my crack. Thinking back on that it felt downright chilly.
That’s hell. never been in a fire suit, but I’ve solved a wiring problem in an Oklahoma attic in summer, and the fire suit tops all. Glgggggg.
Not trying to one up on the hot and miserable thing. Just want to put things in perspective. No matter how bad things are they can always be MUCH worse.
Oh, yes. And people who invade burning premises are far, far nervier than I am. I’ve fought 2 prairie fires, but at least so long as you just keep looking around to be sure you haven’t been encircled, it’s solid, flat ground…
This was my first trip on the Potomac. Is there such a thing as a Class 0 river (LOL)? It was a no stress trip. I could do this stretch without a guide for my next trip now that I know where the ramp is located [apparently the locals keep stealing the street sign, so if you don’t know where it is or have a guide, you can’t find it – even those with GPSs couldn’t find it].
It made me want to try the Shenandoah (we were just downstream from the confluence) which is classified as an intermediate river, which has rocky cliffs and old dams (1804 – 1806) as well as metal spikes that need to be avoided. I will use a guide service for that one.
I don’t own a kayak, but I think I am going to invest in a nice paddle as the rental paddles are designed to be indestructible rather than ergonomic. And check out the end of season sales on kayaks. I used to canoe a lot, so I find the kayak very responsible and relaxing.
@berylkit, I sent you a note on the energy crisis thread, but here it is again…send me an email josephaclark@embarqmail.com and I’ll see what I can do about the beeswax.
I’ve been in a full ensemble in a simulated engine room fire. Actually, the only thing that was simulated was the engine room. It was real fire, it was summer, I was the nozzleman that actually fought the fire. When I got out of there, I couldn’t tell if I was wet from the water out of the hose, or from sweating. I feel for the firefighters of today, we didn’t have as much on as they do. Better to swelter in a suit than burn up without it. I did put in new fiberglass batts in our attic in August of 1994, Silly me for not wearing a dust mask, either, with all of that fiberglass floating around. Well, maybe one of these days, I’ll pay the penalty for it, but that attic was HOT. Without the vent fan, mind you, which had conveniently frozen up before I started work in the attic. Replacing that was an exercise in “steam bath stamina”.
OOOOHHHHH NOOOOO, Joe! Masks are essential for any work with insulation and such stuff. Not the wimpy white ones but full double filters, rated for the job you are doing. I am feeling al little antsy about this as I have just heard that one of our ‘elder statesmen’ potters has developed silicosis. Clay particles stay suspended for 72 hrs.
Decades ago I worked for one miserable summer in a fiberglass factory. No a/c, no masks, and the raw fiber permeated one’s clothes – to the underwear. I quickly learned to keep a separate work wardrobe, and NOT wash my regular clothese with the work clothes. What we didn’t know then . . .
It’s getting cooler here in NE Ohio – a mere 83F! I noticed the catalpa trees in the courtyard have rolled up their leaves and drawn in their branches to avoid the periodic thunderstorms and minimize heat exposure to their fruit.
I’ve had plants that were being watered and the water was just running past the roots so they were drying out – I now keep a garden claw handy to loosen the top layer and allow water to get into it. (Mint, on the other hand, just roots deeper and keeps going.)