Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here on a roasting hot day to bring you some news. You may remember me from such posts as “Unbelievably Roasting Hot”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
The guy I live with said not to lie outside for very long. I might get completely roasted.
I chased the squirrel off the oriole feeder a couple of times, but the guy I live with has a new weapon in his arsenal.
A pump-action squirtgun. It has a longer reach than the other squirtgun.
Today there were lots of orioles at the feeder.
We walked around the garden for a little bit, and then came inside. The guy I live with said the late Henry Mitchell wrote that he used to make onion sandwiches, get them very cold in the refrigerator, go out to his water-lily pond munching on the sandwiches in the heat and humidity of Washington, D.C., and then go back inside.
The guy I live with didn’t have any bread.
The cowpen daisies (Verbesina encelioides) in the “way back” border are completely wilted in the heat. The soil there doesn’t hold very much water at all.
The guy I live with said it was kind of the daisies’ fault, for sowing themselves into this very dry border and not having very deep roots. There are plants all over the garden, in heavier soil, that are doing fine.
The echinops is flowering. The guy I live with said he didn’t know which one this was; his wife planted it very long ago.
But the big deal here, at least to the guy I live with, is getting Incarvillea olgae to flower without being eaten.
The guy I live with said this is the same “olgae” as the honeysuckle pictured a while ago, named for the Russian botanist Olga Fedchenko.
In order to try to keep the grasshoppers from eating all the flowers, he made a garlic spray, with a whole head of garlic. Grasshoppers supposedly don’t like garlic. Peeling a whole head of garlic is not the guy I live with’s idea of fun, but he thought it was worth a try.
A whole head of garlic in there. Plus a little soap.
And so guess what our garden smells like?
The guy I live with said at least we won’t have to worry about vampires now. It is something that occasionally keeps me awake at night.
I’ll leave you with a picture of me in my fort, enjoying the cool breeze from the swamp cooler.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Mew mew mew that will teech yore stinky nayburrss a lesson two 😉
Wee hope THE garlic potion werkss on THEE grassyhoppurrss.
Mani bee carefull to not get roasted outside….wee saw on THE newss THE tempyturess were outta this werld! An Guy pleese stay hydrated.
Wee want to know why Mistur Henry wuud eat cold sliced onion sammichess outside on a *hot* day??? Mew mew mew……
Wee hope it kewlss down soon….
***purss*** BellaDharma an 🙂 BellaSita Mum
I guess some people like onion sandwiches.
It’s not really hotter here than normal at this time of year, unlike places farther south. But it is hot.
Wee have frendss inn Texas who are meltin an Oklahome who are meltin…..
Wee are *hot* butt not overwhelmin; not yet Mani… 😉
It’s not too hot here, but cloudy, which is gross.
Gilroy, which is not too far from here, is the Garlic Capital of the World. That is where the Garlic Festival is. It has been going on longer than most of these other festivals that other towns have. I suspect that it is popular with neither vampires nor grasshoppers.
Henry Mitchell – one of my favorite garden writers of all times (and for a while he had a column in our city paper of non-gardening essays that were also excellent). His enthusiasm for holly trees, iris, so many wonderful plants, was a great influence as I started gardening. I never did try the onion sandwich thing.
Glad you are enjoying the swamp cooler – here dehumidifying is key to being more comfortable in the heat so they probably would not work for our dogs, but a fan in combination with air conditioning does seem to help.
Ceci
One of the first gardening articles the guy I live with read was by Henry Mitchell. The he bought The Essential Earthman.
When the guy I live with moved here, in 1961, no one had air conditioning. It wasn’t necessary. Afternoon or evening rain would cool things off. That’s what’s happening this year, too.
I have it on good authority that Henry Mitchell did not have many visitors – his post-onion sandwich emissions gained such a reputation that everybody did best to avoid him. He the garlic – put the full bulb into a kitchen processor with water; whizz the living daylights out of it and then strain into your spray bottle. Squirt, squirt.
The guy I live with thought about just putting the whole head in the Cuisinart. Not sure if the spray scares away the grasshoppers.
He also said he tried onion sandwiches once, when he went camping, because he read about them in Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River”.
I venture to cheddar and onion sandwiches occasionally.
Not “cheese and pickle”? The guy I live with watches things like “Endeavour”, and there are always cheese and pickle sandwiches.
Very occasionally.
Cheese and Branston pickle, I suppose, according to what we see on TV. The guy I live with has always wanted to try that. Though his favorite types of pickles are Indian.
” he used to make onion sandwiches, get them very cold in the refrigerator”
With thick slabs of butter on a hearty whitebread or challah… like James Beard? Yum. Radish also works well.
The guy I live with says he doesn’t know. The sandwiches business is in One Man’s Garden, which he no longer owns.
Sorry fore THE cloudss Mani! Wee liek cloudss ’cause when THE Sun iss shinin it iss broilin *hot*! 😉 Butt mee getss why you not liek cloudy weather!
It’s kind of like being in an oven, though.