Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the purebred border collie, Mani the roasting hot purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here today to tell you how hot I am, and talk about some other stuff. You may remember me from such posts as “Unbelievably Roasting Hot”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose, not yet totally roasting. This is another morning pose.
The guy I live with couldn’t figure out what to do in the roasting heat. As I’ve pointed out before, he doesn’t mind working in the heat, since he worked outside in heat like this, in telephone repair and installation, wearing a long-sleeve flannel shirt no less, but he had no specific plan for today. He usually has a plan.
The guy I live with wept, because he had no more heavy rocks to move.
“Oh”, he said, “but they can be repositioned.”
(As an aside, because it’s so, so hot, the guy I live with said there’s “internet nonsense” going around claiming that the line “And when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for he had no more worlds to conquer” originated with the movie Die Hard.
It did not. Here is Edward Marbury, A commentarie or exposition on the prophecie of Habakkuk (etc. one of those interminable titles), 1650.
The guy I live with researched this and found a very erudite person who gave this and other examples.
Maybe if it weren’t so hot the guy I live with wouldn’t be so annoyed with such things.)
Anyway. The guy I live with decided to be sensible and reposition the rocks when it gets cooler.
He predicted that would happen in February of 2031, for about two hours, which would be enough time. Historians would call this “The Great Cooldown”.
Speaking of the future, the guy’s I live with’s doctor insisted he have all these routine tests, including one on his birthday, so he can possibly experience that “great cooldown”.
A lot of waiting rooms to spend time in. The guy I live with is very good at waiting; he says it shows him that he’s not the only person in the world, and doesn’t get upset with waiting.
We have a waiting room here. I showed it in the first picture, but here it is, closer up.
The plants in the big clay pots are Salvia coccinea, raised from seeds. but the guy I live with said they probably want lots of water, considering their native habitat is along the Gulf Coast. So he doesn’t have much hope.
The rest of the plants have been repotted into larger pots, with gritty, sandy stuff surrounding the root balls (the “super genius method” again). He won’t wait to plant them until “The Great Cooldown”, but maybe this coming autumn.
It’s easier to give these plants a little water than walk around the garden with a watering can, watering newly-planted plants in this heat, and hoping that the nursery root ball will be completely wetted, because it won’t be.
The guy I live with said he couldn’t count how many plants he’d lost just sticking them in the ground and then watering them, thinking that the watering would wet the nursery soil around the roots, when it never did, and the plants died.
The plants don’t have any old magazines to leaf through, though, in their waiting room.
They’re in shade, but still pretty roasting.
This is me in shade, not roasting, but with the cool, damp breeze of the swamp cooler on me. I’m obviously better off than those plants. Or a lot of people, too.
Some plants don’t need all this fancy treatment, even when it’s roasting outside.
Like these things.
The sacatons, Sporobolus wrightii, look much better after they were transplanted. They’re still roasting, though.
So that’s it for today. It’s way, way, way too hot.
I’ll leave you with a picture of me in my Kitchen Fort, again with the cool breeze of the swamp cooler blowing on me.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Mani, this is why your posts are so good. Not only do you share the Super Genius method, you dispel ridiculous myths. Yes, it is waaaaaaay too hot, and I dislike it.
Thanks. It is way, way too hot here, and very tiresome.
The guy I live with said if you look up Alexander the Great, the internet says “former king of Macedonia”, which he thought was really funny.
He did plant a few plants, you know, just planting them, and now he has to walk around with a watering can, to make sure they’re okay. The Super Genius method, which he named after himself, lets him buy plants and then put them in the waiting room. The roots will go into the (watered) coarse sand and stuff so the plants will have an easier time when they’re planted later.
I will have to try the Super Genius method sometime. The “former king of Macedonia” made me laugh out loud. Reminded me of one synopsis of “The Wizard of Oz,” which is, “Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.”
The guy I live with says that’s funny too. Like when Amy Farrah Fowler on Big Bang Theory told the guys that if Indiana Jones hadn’t been in the movie the story would have wound up the same.
He also says you need to get coarse sand, like paving sand, and not “play sand” which is much too finely-grained and will be without oxygen. Roots need oxygen.
The internet nonsense about the saying originated with the movie Die Hard is why the guy you live with should spend more time here than with those folks on FB!
Thanks for writing about nursery root balls in this post, and the shocking picture of a rootball from last post, “moving the sacatons.” I had the horrible experience of discovering how true this is just yesterday when I discovered such a potbound rootball in a plant in my garden that I thought I had attended to properly. Very disturbing, and going forward I will do the “sacaton soak” and the “super genius method” more asiduously.
Finally, thanks for the tour of the ‘waiting room’ – I was very curious about those plants, especially what turned out to be the salvia
You’re welcome. The salvia was supposed to aid in luring all four species of hummingbird to the garden–black-chinned have just arrived–but the guy I live with ordered the seed before the watering restrictions. There are eight plants in pots that need attention more than the salvias. One conifer is already dying.
You can soak plants in water for a couple of days. It helps soften the roots, for one thing, so they’re easier to separate. Or sort of separate. It’s almost impossible to get the roots soaked that way if they’re already planted.
Roots will grow faster into damp coarse sand than into soil.
Oh, doctors who give an appointment time and keep exactly to that are so appreciated!…no more waiting rooms to conquer!
The guy I live with says he doesn’t have too much trouble waiting for doctors, but he has an appointment to have the car have its routine maintenance later this month, and that does involve a lot of waiting.
He usually goes out to lunch then, with his sister and her husband, and that’s nice.
Mee-yow Mani an Guy today iss paw-full up heer…it iss so hot an hue-mid. Plus wee have smoke from Wild firess inn our Purrovince!! Over 100 firess burnin. THE air smells like burnin wood an plastick… sorry mee went on a tangent…
Guy you did alot of werk. **Apawss Apawss**
Mani you look so “CHILL” there!! Wee chillin inn our place two. TWO ucky to sit out!
***nose rubss*** bellaDharma an ((hugss)) BellaSita Mum
It’s nice to sit out here, because there’s no humidity. No smoke today.
The guy I live with is going to do more work.