Melissa - Thanks for the update. I had been thinking about you, with all of the news on the TV about the amazing temps in much of Europe. Glad that so much of your garden is surviving - shade is so important, I agree.

We have started seeing fires again here in Northern Calif, but none near here, thank heavens. My DH and I are lucky - we live about 5 blocks from San Francisco Bay, and the Pacific Ocean is only a few miles from here, so that keeps our temperatures moderate - it has been between 70 and 90 degrees F all summer so far, with most of the time not passing 85. Our summer dense fog comes in like clockwork every evening, and sometimes does not burn off until noon. That supplies some moisture to the plants. Of course, no rain - we never, even in non drought years, get any rain between about April and Oct/Nov. We have been able to use our irrigation system, as our local reservoirs are still way higher than normal, b/c of a deluge we got last Oct which filled them up to spilling.

Hope your conditions moderate, and very glad you have all of that space with lots of shade to relax in.

Jackie

I was also happy to see your update Melissa. I’ve been wondering how our friends across the pond were handling this insane heat. Hopefully some more will check in

on this thread

I've been thinking about you, too, Melissa. I can't bear to look at the heatwave maps that seem to be an evil-looking, angry, blackish red all over. It seems nearly the whole world is baking right now, and I fear it's just a sample of things to come. It scares me that so much of Europe is dealing with this without the air conditioning that we take for granted over here. As of yesterday, I heard that "over a thousand" in Europe had died due to the heat wave.

Do what you can, and feel up to, but don't over-do. It's so easy to fall prey to heat exhaustion, especially as we get older. It hasn't been nearly as hot here as it is out west or in Europe, and still, twice this year I've gotten too hot, and then wasted the rest of the day (and part of the next!) recovering. It's not only dangerous, that's time wasted I could have been working (read: piddling. It's been too hot for most "work"). So DO be careful, you and your husband both.

Our gardens are more resilient than we give them credit for. Hopefully yours will rebound when they finally do get rain.

John

P.S. I HAVE been reading your posts, but the heat is sapping even the motivation to type, lol.

So good to hear from you Melissa. I feel for you and your garden.

Here, I'm in a bit of a mess too. The pipe from our well to our home has sprung a "spring" (leak) which is not normal. We are in line for repair. All water pressures are normal at the moment, but our irrigation system is clogging up at the emitters. Some debris is getting in.

I call the repair people weekly in hopes of some action soon.

This means I will need to flush all zones and put on new emitters when I should be deadheading and weeding. Ideally, I should do this after the system is repaired and a filter put in. My husband and I are considering redoing the above ground irrigation tubing section by section now that we know so much more than when we started.

So I am partially irrigated at this point but I guess this is the nature of life. It is always something.

I am hoping for the best for you and your husband.

Melissa, I wish your news was better than our news, but the evolving climate crisis is more or less world-wide. And getting worse.

We are rationed to reducing our overall water-use. And we have done that . . . sacrificing some plants, and reducing what others get. The frustrating part of that is looking around the area, and seeing a great many people who have not cut back, and clearly don't intend to.

Almost no roses blooming, now. but Plumerias are providing a healing spot of color.

Good to hear from you all, Jackie, oursteelers, John, Sheila, Jeri. Yes, the news is bad all over the world. Guess what? I have no solutions, though I'm taking some individual steps, some of which I mentioned in my first post. We need systemic solutions, political or economic, to encourage or compel the ignorant or indifferent to behave more responsibly with natural resources.

I hope your gardens stay alive, mostly, and flourish where possible, and DON'T get devoured by fire or drought. Jackie, hello, and congratulations on that well-filled reservoir, a resource I know how to appreciate. Oursteelers, hello; I hope your garden is doing well. Sheila, I hope you get your irrigation system running again, with no water loss. Thank you for the good wishes. I'm hopeful that we and the garden are going to pull through without too much damage. John, it's good to hear from you. I agree with what you said about the resilience of gardens, though I do wonder how much they can take before the resilience gives way. My work outside lately has mostly been in the woods, where I've been cutting down elms, which are nastily invasive, brittle-wooded, and ever prone to abrupt death, to make more room for the, mainly, flowering ashes and oaks that I wish to see become the dominant species down there. I was down there for some hours today, and was actually comfortable in the fresh green in spite of my sawing and lopping and the work clothes I was wearing. Trees! Trees! The world needs more trees! Anyway, to return to your post, we all need to be careful about working in the heat, and I hope you are, too. I think your summer is much more humid than ours right now, and that makes a great difference.

N.b. Sheila: weeding? deadheading? in the SUMMER?

Jeri, I see color in gardens around town, especially crepe myrtle, and this may be trumpet vine and Cape plumbago season, too, I'm not sure. Here with our lack of irrigation, now that the couple of patches of agapanthus have finished flowering, we have pretty much just quite enjoyable green, with some variety introduced by plants with variegated foliage. I enjoy the colony of Persicaria, growing in the shade, the leaves splashed with cream, and beyond them in the bed, the white-striped Japanese iris. In our climate these are wonderfully sturdy against drought, and everything else, too.

Back at the end of the terrifying summer of 2003, people said things like "I think that that was an exception" "there won't be another summer as bad as that", etc. Instead,this one is coming very, very close ; there are no longer "heat waves" here in Italy-the atrocious heat is a constant,and every summer any more is awful-this one more so than usual,but the entire trend is just SO anguishing. I won't even mention the drought.

Here's a link to an infuriating video of a British news program, where the idiotic anchorwoman interupts the scientist who is warning people of the up-coming heat and the danger it presents to people. https://video.repubblica.it/green-and-blue/clima-e-ambiente/la-scena-del-film-don-t-look-up-si-avvera-la-presentatrice-scredita-il-meteorologo-in-diretta-tv/421321/422257?ref=RHTP-BS-I353012196-P7-S2-T1 Such negationism is Infuriating and,in my opinion, unforgivable and inexcusable.

I do have some color in the garden. Some of the polyantha's are blooming, Charles walker, mountain mignonette, Brittianna, Leonie lamesh, sweet chariot, Yvonne rabier , Denise cassgrain put on a great display all year, another favorite, Lauren has a few, My two most mature Teas are blooming, not loads of blooms, but some. Those are Mme. Lombard, and Marie van houtte. A immature Dr. Grill has given me some blooms. It looks a lot like mme. Lombard to me. A immature marechal neil has a few blooms. Mutabilis is blooming. Princess de sagon is blooming. There are actually a few others, but I can't remember everyone. have some non roses blooming, Hardy hibiscus, trumpet vine, daylilies, hydrangeas. We have had good rain this year, for which I am eternally grateful. Otherwise, there might be less blooming.

I couldn't agree with you more, bart, though I think reality is catching up with the climate change deniers. I'm not going to watch the video, which I had heard about, as there's maddening material enough as it is.

DD's coming home today from boiling Milan, staying until the eve of her last exam before the break. It was too hot to study because too hot to think, and the suburban train lines weren't working today so she couldn't go anywhere, even if there were anywhere to go. To explain to Americans, Italy is still a largely un-airconditioned country, which makes 40C hard to live with.

Bart, I am awfully happy about my green, but living in town as you do you don't have that option, do you? And getting to your garden means a hot drive. For my part I haven't been down in the big garden for weeks: it's just too sunny there.

Alana, how happy for you that you've gotten rain and therefore roses. You do make me remember how much I love Teas, which I still hope to be able to grow in the garden one day. When I'm a hundred, perhaps. I hear suggestions that the weather will change in August, and I sure hope that's the case. I so want it to rain, and so do all the plants. And I can hear that bart needs it.

UPDATE: It has rained! This week we got two thunderstorms in the late evening, the second in particular a heavy one. Between them I think we got almost three inches of rain (source: a bucket I chanced to leave out). The plants have all freshened up marvellously and the house has cooled down. It's still hot, the air is muggy, the mosquitos are rejoicing, but all in all life looks much better than before.

Bart, did it rain down your way as well?

Nope; nothing good going on here.

Congrats on the rain, Melissa! We are having to do with our daily dense fog belt coming & going, but that is way better than frying temps!

Jackie