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.
good luck with your cypress ! We are having a really hot summer, and very little rain to make it worse. The Deer (our area is over-run with them) have been eating the leaves and branches on our new-ish Yoshino cherry. Grrrr.
On a different note, I found this http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/22/authors-bypass-publishers-ebooks-amazon
to be quite interesting. Authors taking some control back !!
Oh, what I wouldn’t give for 75 degrees! It’s been right around 100 deg F here on the East Coast, and it definitely is not a “dry” heat. Good luck with the flora though.
Yeah, right at this moment we have a heat index of +100F and it is wet heat. Yucky. My ideal season is fall and my ideal temp is a sunny 76F with a cool breeze, preferably coming off a lake. I get that so rarely though.
How quickly they forget, Carolyn 75 degrees isn’t hot. That is a cool, spring day. I went for a walk at lunch. It was in the low 90’s, but it really wasn’t the heat. In fact, sometimes with the breeze it was almost cool; but the humidity was brutal!
I’m doubting it could have been 75. It felt like 95. I have rarely sweated so much in my whole life. I was drenched….
yeah, I checked: they’re admitting to 85. But I still think it was higher.
If it’s any consolation, Death Valley has been running 125F (50C)–but it’s a dry heat, so it only feels like 115F (45C). Eek.
More constructively and guessing wildly, you’ve got a strong alkaline. How about pouring one of those big jugs of Costco vinegar (mild acid) around the concrete, give it some time to neutralize the alkaline, and then washing the area with water? Don’t most plants like acid?
Could the reason for this event be that the rains have stopped for a while, giving the alkaline a chance to accumulate?
Oh, if only we were 75. Heat index up here in NE Oklahoma has been 108.
Oh, glug! I repent of complaining.
Down where I live, we get 20 to 30 degree temperature swings between day and night. 75 can feel almost chilly when it’s been 95 to 100 a couple of hours earlier!
Good Lord, I’m grateful right now not to have a garden!
I know how you feel, though. And … I’m sure I’ll know that feeling once again, when we’re done with me being a student!
Well, I’m in Turkey right now and it’s usually between 91 to 96 everyday and getting all the way down to 77 or 79 at night and 50% to 90% humidity. I have never sweat so much in my life. Halfway through now, only a month to go.
I’ve been in Turkey in August. It can be very, very hot.
Does everybody still run their air conditioners with all the windows wide open? It was the most curious habit, in Istanbul, and all the way to Ephesus…window units chugging away and every window open.
CJ, complain all you want, you’re entitled to do so. Remember, temperature is relative to all of us. Once you acclimate to a particular climate, you have a more difficult time if that changes or if you go to another area with a different climate. I remember the first time we stepped out of the airport on Guam, I felt as if I had stepped into a steam bath. But, after a few weeks, it was normal (at least, as normal as Guam can be). We had temps of 92, heat index went up to 102 here at my house. Today is much better, even though it’s still hot, there’s a breeze coming in from the southwest.
Well, I wish everyone as much coolth as you wish.
We are, however, headed for the steam bath ourselves. The temperatures will hit 97 on Monday, which I think some of you would view as a cool-off, and moderate to 95. We are due to get up at 4 if we want to do any yard work in August, and I will be surprised if we hit 100 this year, but high 90’s are perfectly likely. We have indeed gotten spoiled by a long spring and mild early July.
Now it’s coming, for sure. And will likely not moderate until mid-September.
It’s 10:00 AM and time to stop the yard work. Temp and humidity are back up, summer rain yesterday, hot with low humidity the day before which is nice but unusual for this area. Hummingbirds are at the impatiens and fuchsias. The pond is filling. I think I need a venturi pump until I can get the real filter in. Hopefully that can happen in a few days, but filling from a dug well is a tortoise event. 😉
I have a shady deck and have been bringing a fan out to keep the air moving. Hey! It’s not as crazy as it sounds! 😆
There is something magic about going out to garden when the sun is just coming up. Stay cool, drink lots of lemon water and and enjoy the fishies. 😀
You’ll find the area near the pond about 10 degrees cooler than the ambient elsewhere. Even better if you have shade. We have our red hawthorne, so pleasant a shade once the sun gets at the right angle.
I can recommend some pond products, now that we have finally gotten our local pond expert in on the problem. Getting started with a good bacterial dose is important, and getting ahead of the algae once it starts—and keeping ahead—is a good thing. We fell behind early this year—hence our problems. But you will be a while, probably into next spring, before you see much. Next spring, hit the algae hard early, while the water is still cold, and you will have a far easier time!
Due to Excessive Heat Advisories for the Dayton, OH area, I am going to skip kendo practice today. CJ, in the book I loaned to Jane, you can see how heavy the equipment is, and especially the headgear and the jacket. I already overdid it yesterday at the YMCA and it is air conditioned.
Get your core temperature under control: bigtime important for Excessive Heat. Using cooling on major veins and arteries, plus a reasonable amount of cool liquid in the gut, all good. I have become a worse heat wuss than ever I was, but I grew up without air conditioning in Oklahoma…(which, after several bouts of heat stroke—in which I was pounced upon by event medics—has made me a really, really sincere wuss…)
No real problems with heat here; I don’t believe it’s ever gone much over 90 degrees. Worst thing I ever had regarding sun was a run in with sun poisoning after helping sail a racing yacht from Honolulu to Lahaina (Hawaiian for ‘cruel sun’). This mainly involved being living self-propelled ballast parked on one side or the other of the ship as needed. The waterproof sunblock wasn’t as waterproof as advised, and my legs became brick red, with palm sized blisters to follow… eew.
That’s dangerous sun: you get it from all sides, reflected off the water. Owwwwwwie.
we went car shopping today. Saw a 104 degrees on the car’s outside temp gauge !!!!
wife liked the RAV-4 the best I think
Ow! The RAV-4 is a great car.
We’ve had a RAV now for 2 years, and LOVE it. It is my wife’s car, but we use it for most trips as well as her daily gadding about. Get the V-6, very sporty to drive and only a single mpg diff between the 4 and the 6 engines. Very good on gas, we get 28mpg if I can keep my right foot out of the injector pump 😉 and it is very sure-footed in ice and snow (we have the AWD version).
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Short 90s here today, we went rafting on the Payette River for 11 miles, the water is a perfect temperature. We had with us some Chinese friends who had never even been in a small craft before, I had them all on the starboard side, paddling, and when we hit the first good bumpy bit all three went over the side–which left that side so light that the next wave rolled the raft vertical and my wife and I, as well as the third guy paddling on that side, went in as well, leaving only one guy and his wife aboard. Too much fun, everyone was safe,and our Chinese friends have a great story to tell.
Oooops. Jane and I are about getting to the ‘safe’ stage of paddling, but it’s taken several tries.
Baltimore – my yard thermometer read 105F at 3:30 p.m. I decided I needed to be on the water. Drove to West Virginia and took a sunset/moonlight kayak guided trip on the Potomac. The world is a wonderful place with moonlight reflecting on the water. All the insects were very noisy. Venus made a bright appearance. The water was as warm as a bathtub, so it wasn’t as refreshing as I’d hoped but still better than being in the city with all the reflected heat. No spills, but the rented kayak had a crack so I had to bail water while paddling. Closed my eyes and let the current take me back to the landing.
Drove back to Baltimore. Heat lightening as I turned onto 695. Yard thermometer read 90F at midnight.
This brings back memories of the times I spent in Tokyo. Every year, more tall building are built on the waterfront, blocking the cooling breezes from moving into the city. Every year, the average temperature inland goes up. What are we doing to our planet? The air conditioning units generate heat. If it wasn’t so humid, I’d try to sleep with the windows open and the air off.
Cities are heat-concentrators, for sure. Not only no trees, but concrete acting as a solar collector, atop it all.
But that trip down the Potomac sounds wonderful!