Know what you mean. It was still 77 degrees at 3 am this morning. Going up to 108 again today. Trying to save my newly arrived one gallon container of Mary Mag. She is getting quite the test.

102 degrees several days in a row and in the sun near all the concrete it must be at least 115. I don't know how the roses can even survive this, but they're doing their best. I'm confined to the house when I'm not at work because I can't tolerate the heat. I venture out in the evening to water and pull off the shriveled flowers. Several insects are chewing up the leaves royally and the bunnies are eating the buds and leaves at the bottoms. We feed the bunnies and squirrels to lessen their forays into the garden, and are putting out water for them and any other day or night garden visitors. It's a time to hunker down and survive, and to be happy that so far nothing has succumbed.

It wasn't as hot today as it has been. Only got to 99 today but we have a cool front coming in tomorrow and Wed high is supposed to be 88. The roses and I will be very grateful.

We've not had any rain in 60 days and everything is crisp. Since all of my roses are in pots I've been able to control their water so all seem to be fairing okay. A few young leaves are browning around the edges and all the blooms have gone to single petals but I'm hopeful we only have a couple more weeks of the high heat.

I'm ready for the fall flush!

I too have been putting water out for the birds and bunnies and every morning the jackrabbits can be seen at the water bowl. They are not eating my roses at all and seem to be more interested in the petunias. As long as I leave a couple of pots of petunias down right beside the water bowl they leave the roses alone.

..for me to be hot, hot and dry, I would have to switch the central heating system back on.... tomorrow Tuesday it will be low 60's max, with non stop heavy rain....all day....

...I'd prefer it a little warmer...

Hot, for us, in the 90s. Very humid, also in the 90%s range. And despite what they have been showing for Michigan we've only had .04 inches of rain in the last 2 weeks. That's very dry for us. Places only a few miles to the north or south of me have had more than that but some how it keeps missing my yard. My friend calls it the invisible wedge. It seems to split the storms and send them around us.

Uffa, seil, we seem to have that invisible wedge thing in my area, too. All of Italy was rained on-except us! I want a good rain SO much!!!

It was really hot yesterday in the 90'sF, today we are getting a break will be high 81F, tomorrow will be hot again high 88F.......we had 6" rain in 24 hrs last Sunday morning, some places lost power and had flooding. Under the 90's hot heat, I did some gardening in the morning and night, mowed lawn and finished dead heading! I thought about the gardeners down south, gardening under the high heat can help you to lose weight really fast, I had a whole watermelon for lunch and dinner...... :-) Rain is coming this afternoon.

Our hot dry summer finally broke, Nik: perhaps your turn will come soon. We too had temps like yours, no airconditioning, though. I find that when it's 95F in the shade I simply can't do anything. It got really boring. Anyway, rain has fallen, the blazing high pressure system has broken up, and fall is on the way . Thank God. This is about as hot a summer as I've ever lived through.

Too early for fall here, Melissa. Although with the way the weather has gone crazy you never know. We had a hot, humid (but not wet) summer (it's dry usually) apart from the last couple of weeks when it has been hot and dry. Although we didn't get the kind of heatwaves we sometimes get with temps in the 100s not relenting during the night. It gets quite cooler in the night which makes it the best time to be out (if you don't have to wake up early to go to work in the morning) and you don't mind the mosquitoes.. Last time it rained where I live was June 27th so we could do with some rain but none is on the way.

Nik, Summer is hot and dry over there, but the winter in Athens must be cold, Athens is well known for fur stores. A lot of furs here are from Greece. :-)

Lol, not so. There are cold(-ish) places in Greece but not Athens. Athens winters can be very chilly and humid but not cold, it very rarely gets down to freezing. Fur industry is a traditional home craft industry in northern Greece but the 'raw material' is mostly imported. Of course I'm against the fur industry but it seems that there are a lot of people from northeastern Europe who patronize this industry and obviously disagree with me.

Here in No Cal no one is complaining about the heat, even though it has been in the 90s and 100s F, and humidity mostly 15-20%. What folks are complaining about is the smoke & fires. Our "fire season" usually is in Oct, but this year it started in July. Hundreds of thousands of acres burning, dozens of serious fires, just in the Northern half of the state. Firefighters are here from all over the US.

We were just at our cabin up in the mountains West of Redding, and there are so many large fires (total acreage is over 150,000 and counting) in just that one remote county (Trinity county) that they have stopped calling them by name, and are calling them by 4 different "complexes". They usually give each fire a name, but the fires have been merging, so no longer using the names. 3,000+ fire fighters, who are just trying to get lines around the fires - do not have the ability to put them out, but trying to keep them away from the little towns. Over 4 dozen houses burned so far. When a successful fire break is 100% all around a fire, they call it "contained". In one of the larger complex of fires, the "estimated containment date" is Oct 1! And that is just in one county. Nearer the SF Bay Area there are numerous small fires, and two big ones which have been burning for 3-4 weeks, and have also burned over 45 houses and 130,000 acres.

The smoke travels 100s of miles in the mountains - our cabin is way far away from the big fires, but none the less when we left yesterday, you could hardly see the trees right across the creek from our cabin - I was glad we were going home. The Red Cross has set up "clean air" shelters, in schools and senior centers, etc, with HEPA filters on the buildings, to filter out the smoke. Very scary. Nik, I know this sort of thing has happened in Greece before, so you know what I am talking about - when Mediterranean climates get winter droughts on top of our normal hot & dry summers, the native vegetation (which is drought tolerant because full of natural resins ) just explodes.

So, we all are sincerely hoping that we will get an actual winter this year, for the first time in 3 years. Of course, that will cause floods and mud slides on the denuded hills, but the fires will go out.

Jackie

Jackie, I fully know what you're talking about. Wildfires are scary and can cost lives and loss of property although they are part of the natural cycle in Med climate zones. We haven't had much of that this summer (up to know) because be didn't get much of the usual dry northerlies that feed them.

Nik, Glad to know you have a good mild winter there, it's good for roses; here is the "iceland", subzero weather, and I have 2 coats made in Greece, they're very well made indeed.

Sorry to hear about the fire in CA, there is also a big fire in Washington right now, it's on today's ABC news, we lost 3 firefighters there...... I wish the endless rain here can be moved to CA, Washington.

Good Heavens - I just looked up fires throughout the US Western states. Over 100 large uncontained fires. US is out of experienced firefighting human resources, so they are actually sending in regular army troops with little training. Good news - experienced fire crews are arriving from Australia and New Zealand (thank you!) to help. This has been done before, and US firefighters have gone there - the "fire seasons" in the Western US and Aus & NZ are at opposite times of year, and both regions are subject to wild fires, so it makes sense (also no cultural or language barriers - well, sort of).

Jackie

I didn't know there are so many fires going on now......not good. Which one near you Jackie?

http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/

Great map!