Sunday 3 August 2014

Summer Heat Wave

It's so hot it's very hard to get down to work. We spend our days swimming in the river, and I spend my nights translating.
The garden seems a bit tired - or it might be just me. Lobelias have spread and filled out all the space, so it looks nice. It's always interesting to see which plants take over the garden. It's lobelias this year because I've sown literally hundreds from seed and now I have lobelias everywhere. Surely it's going to be something quite different next year.


Each year my knowledge and understanding of gardening grows, and so do my ambitions.
There are things I know I won't be sowing again any time soon - like the leafy goosefoot (chenopodium foliosum) that I'm quite disappointed in. It's called "spinach strawberry" in my native language, and it tastes nothing like strawberries. If anything, it tastes like spinach, a bit bland and to some extent even a bit unpleasant. It gets better if it's very ripe, but still... It does have some ornamental value, however.

Gladioli are starting to burst open, and the blood red silk is spilling out. I love gladioli, but I hope they wait a bit. I planted them later on purpose - to have flowers to give the teachers on September 1. I do hope they wait just four more weeks... But you can't keep a flower in the bud if it's determined to come out.


I've harvested the onions - not a lot, and not very big, but those are just some nice side-effects of having spring-onions up till now.

On Friday we got the firewood delivered. It's one of those seasons - like you have a strawberry season, and then there's the car repair season, and there's firewood season. I will have to find time to put it all away in neat rows in the shed... But not today. It's just too hot.


It was just as hot yesterday, and I suggested we went on a nightly roadtrip to the seaside. It was the best decision - the trip was not as excruciating in our AC-less car, and the beach was rather vacant, if not for some youths in tents. The water was just perfect, and I did just a tiny little bit of skinny-dipping in the dark while the kids had their sandwiches in the dunes. Made my husband excited about swimming in the sea as well.




I'm longing for a thunderstorm. The last one was four days ago, and it seems like an eternity. Everything is dry, and I'm tired of this heat. Will I really have to go downstairs to the cellar and search for the electric fan? I hate wasting electricity on things I can do without, bet I have a huge job to do this night, and perhaps it's time I admitted I really can't do without it.
But four days ago we had a thunderstorm that was also long overdue, and I sat on the stairs outside the house and let the water cool me down, and the dog was so anxious about the thunder I had to comfort him constantly.

Oh, good times. Weather.com is not my friend and predicts some rain no sooner that next Thursday with temperatures over 30 degrees Celsius every single day...
But it's summer, and in just seven or eight months I'll be ready to give up anything just to have some warm weather again.

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