Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular but totally roasting host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to tell you all about how incredibly super ultra unbelievably roasting hot I am. You may remember me from such roasting hot posts as “Beyond Super Roasting”, “Still Roasting”, “Into The Garden, Endlessly Roasting”, “Ultra Roasting”, “Super Totally Extra Roasting Hot”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
Really, this is the only time I’ve been even remotely comfortable, except for the times when I get to get totally soaked with the hose.
It’s been so hot neither of us have been able to do much of anything, except at night. Right now, on Monday afternoon, it’s 96F (36C) and eight percent humidity. Record high temperatures for September, here, with no end in sight. The guy I live with said it was like a furnace, but I think he exaggerated a little, the way he does.
You can see some of the dead branches in the honey locust in the picture, there. The guy I live with says he might have the tree cut down, and something else, like an apple tree, planted there instead.
A lot of plants in the garden have died this year. The guy I live with walks around the garden sometimes, in the evening, and says goodbye to old, familiar plants which have been burned to a crisp. He has been watering some, too.
It’s been so hot here that we mostly do things when the sun goes down. We have a new thing in the upstairs bedroom.
The guy I live with got it when his knee was hurting and he had to lie in bed for a long time. It’s not a very big TV, and you can see, and he’s been watching something called “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” late at night. He said he watched that years ago when it first came out.
This is me looking at the TV when it was first turned on.
The TV feet are duct-taped to the top of my upstairs fort so the TV won’t fall off.
He said this was a valuable addition to our modern lifestyle, though it was not very expensive at all. I guess it’s emotionally valuable.
So yesterday, even though it was roasting, roasting hot out, the guy I live with went over to Kelly Grummons’ garden because there were plants on sale, and he could hardly resist. If you Google “cold hardy cactus” the website will come up with all sorts of things on it.
There was an agave, finished flowering and forming seeds. The stalk needed a little help.
This is an opuntia he got. Not very friendly-looking. It’s going to live in a pot, out in the front yard.
The guy I live with said he hadn’t visited this garden since he and his wife came over to take pictures for “the book”, and that a lot had changed, the way lots do, and that this might quickly become one of his favorite gardens.
It isn’t very far away, either.
He did almost pass out from the heat, but that’s another story.
In other news, it’s time to start seeing katydids. And so we have been.
I of course wanted to try it, since I’ve never had katydid, but the guy I live with said not to, the way he always does, and anyway the katydid flew away right as I was about to close my terrifically fierce, vise-like jaws on it.
He said it’s hard not to think of katydids without a tear or two coming to his eyes. He and his wife would walk along the sidewalk where we saw this one, at night, trying to find katydids with a flashlight after they heard one. They aren’t always easy to see, that way.
There are books like this, downstairs.
”
But anyway we’ve been seeing katydids. Sometimes we hear them.
We’ve also been hearing a lot of cicadas. The guy I live with really likes them, though the incredible heat lately has putting a damper on a lot of things he might like. It doesn’t seem like September at all.
The hummingbirds are still stopping at the flowers and feeders. Maybe you can see one, here.
I guess that’s all I have. It’s so hot the days aren’t much fun. I know that the guy I live with is watching me to make sure I don’t get overheated.
I’ll leave you with this picture of me guarding the front door. You can see that what’s called the “marble-topped table” has almost lost its marble, because of how I run around the table to be all fierce like you see here, but the guy I live with always pushes the marble back, so it won’t get broken. It’s Italian green marble, if you wanted to know. An heirloom.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
It has been terribly hot here to Mani. Like 108 degrees for a couple of days. Not any fun at all. Especially when you work in front of an oven at work. Looking forward to some fall weather. Katydids are fun. I have seen a few praying mantis here lately. We still have a lot of hummingbirds and the Orioles are still hanging out too. I know it will be boring here soon enough. I am trying to enjoy the last of the summer days.
Oh, that sounds way too hot. The guy I live with said he “had to” make pad thai this afternoon and so he did, and the house got even hotter. We haven’t seen any praying mantises this year, and I don’t know what happened to the orioles, but they seem to be gone. I guess they leave around this time of year anyway. This can be kind of a sad time of year, though neither of us will miss the endless heat. I think we’re setting all kinds of records.
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Guud Greef Mani an yore ‘guy’ 96 deegreess iss far too *hot*….wee have been around 68-70 here an furry comfy. Sorry mee shuud not tell youss’ that.
Wee not have Katydidss butt wee do Cicada’ss an one jumped onto THE open bedroom window an hee sang to mee fore a furry long time. Mee just sat there lissenin to him….mee was toetallee enthralled!
Wee are sorry sum of THE plantss are dyin; it iss not easy to garden when it iss to *hot* an yore ‘guy’ iss not 100 purr cent.
Wee sure hope it kewlss off soon an you both can enjoy Life propurrlee again…..
***purrsss*** BellaDharma
Grate photoess of THE Hummybird! LadyMew sayss wee used to have them too. Butt shee not seen any this Summer….
Thanks. It has cooled off this morning. (I guess we missed your comment when it came by email. This is getting weird.)
It’s really okay that some plants have died; the guy I live with said that the garden has suddenly become too big, or at least it seems that way.
Whew! What a reeleef Mani!! Wee were worried ’bout you an yore ‘guy’. An LadyMew sayss sumtimess gardenss sorta just xplode when THE Hu’man doess not do stuff inn them regular like! LadyMew will onlee werk inn our wee garden under bedroom window an THE nayburr’ss as hee iss a shut inn….LadyMew wishes shee had more energee to do more 😉
Yes, it’s only 78F here today. The guy I live with told his friend just today that the effects of the hormone blocker make it easier for him to have excuses not to do anything. He’s always enjoyed not doing anything, especially after having worked almost every day for thirty years. Not too many weeds here, though.
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96 and 8 % humidity actually sounds nice compared to the 96 and 60% we had this evening. Shouldn’t complain since we then had a thunder storm with delightful rain. Excellent cicadas here this year, too. Your new cactus is impressive!
ceci
Uh, the guy I live with said he might die in humidity like that. Here, the humidity always goes down as the temperature goes up. At least we have that. The cactus is pretty spiny, isn’t it? They do perfectly well in pots here, left outside all year. It’s called ‘Dixie’s Delight’. Named after a cactus expert from eastern Oregon, I think.
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The area where the hummingbird’s feeding looks much cooler than it probably was, just because of the tight focus on the shady stone, with the blazing roasting well in the background. Hope the heat lets up soon.
Kelly Grumman’s garden does look appealing, but maybe not at mid-day during a roasting heat wave.
The guy I live with said it was really nice, though hot. He’s going back this weekend, with his friend. Or meet her there. Something like that.
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Thanks; it’s supposed to be “cooler” tomorrow, I hear. Maybe a few degrees less than a zillion. I think the hummingbird pictures were taken in the morning. The guy I live with was just sitting at the laptop, staring out into the garden.
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I went to Denver in June for Garden Bloggers Fling. You could have joined us Mani, because you are a Garden Blogger but I don’t know how you feel about buses -I know you would have been popular though. Anyway, we only got one hour at Denver Botanical Garden , so I have decided to return to Denver next year -it is a short plane trip for me. I want to visit in September though -but it can’t be hot. I just don’t care for that at all. So I will visit at the end of Sept and hope for no hottness. And no snow. I don’t have the proper clothes for snow because I live in Northern Calif wine country.
The guy I live with said that DBG is worth visiting any time of the year, even though he hasn’t been there since May. It was so hot this summer that he didn’t want to leave me at home, alone, roasting. It hasn’t snowed here in September for years, now, though of course me saying that might make it snow, huh. The weather things (pieces of newspaper glued to the garage door) say that the average number of days with thunderstorms in September is 3.5, but storms are forecast every day starting tomorrow, so obviously the weather has changed here. I guess you never can tell.
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It’s so dry here in the rain shadow of the Blue Ridge that my asters dried up.
Well, asters are one thing that do get watered here, because they’re so wonderful in autumn. The guy I live with always forgets to order more, for this time of year, but we do have the really nice ones from Far Reaches Farm, like ‘Vasterival’. They live in “the enclosure” which gets watered about once a week. Not enough, probably.
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“If you Google “cold hardy cactus”” A gazillion years ago we were looking through the classifieds in the Newtown (CT) Bee weekly and came across a John Spain (doyenne of Eastern winter/wet garden cacti) ad. Visited his place and saw him at various NARGS and Connecticut Cactus and Succulent Society functions over the decades. A lovely man, and I think, still with us at 95+. We kept a raised bed of his opuntia cv’s in CT but foolishly left them behind when we moved to NC. Now we grow mostly Echinopsis and related in the “frostfree” (unless the heater fails) greenhouse, dead dry during the coolth. Many survived the recent 3F “incident”.
Yes, the guy I live with met Mr. Spain, too, and said he was super nice.
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I enjoyed your garden visit.
I stayed indoors when it recently got to 90 here. That’s the hottest we’ve had, broke records in nearby Astoria, Oregon.
Thanks. The guy I live with and his friend went again, yesterday. It was pretty much roasting hot but he came back early, so I was okay. Today, it’s cooler, and we have a seventy percent chance of gigantic hail. This has been the way of the weather here all summer long. 95 degrees every day, and no rain for weeks, and then if it cools off, gigantic hail. The guy I live with tried to remind whoever is in charge of the weather that this is September, not May, June, or July, and it’s about time for the weather to be less violent. I think it had no effect.
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That agave stalk is silly. Someone must really want the seed! I wonder if it tastes like asparagus, like yucca stalks do. By the time they get that big, they are too big to eat anyway. Asparagus is probably good with katydid; not that I would know.
Yes, the guy I live with said the seed was being saved.
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Agaves are so easy to propagate by division of the MANY pups that develop after the main plant dies . . . right after bloom. There will way more of that agave than anyone know what to do with. Of course, since plants are sold there, all the pups, as well as seed grown plants, will be able to go to good homes. They bloom so rarely, and the seed last so long, that it must make sense to collect the seed.
Yucca whipplei, which blooms similarly, actually makes very few seed, and only if it blooms where the particular yucca moth that pollinates it lives. The yucca moth pollinates about 1% of all those flowers, and only to lay its eggs in the pollinated flower. When the larvae hatch, they eat almost all of the seed. So after such spectacular bloom, very few seed, if any, are actually produced.
By the way, yucca moths probably are not very scary. They are small and stay out of the way.
Good to know; thanks.
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