The high heat setting

Saturday, after the Dishwasher drama, I decided it would be a fabulous idea to go wander around in the heat some more, but ya know, on purpose, because that knocks ten, fifteen degrees off the top right away. If you’re wandering around outside in your yard, in the heat, because you’re chasing dishwasher installers of course it’s going to feel like 8000 degrees - its not like you want to be outside... you probably aren’t dressed appropriately and most likely you are not wearing a hat or sunglasses - You are very likely carrying a heavy, automatic weapon and maybe bucket of boiling oil. Chances are, you are not at your cutest.

But, go and wander around someone else's yard, and it’s much more closer to the 4000-6000 degree range, almost springlike. Except this weekend, I wandering around someone else's yard and it was well into the 9000 degree range outside and at that point you aren’t just dealing with heat, you dealing with hostility. I walked around this lovely garden feeling like I was walking around an over heated room with a very low ceiling and no ventilation.

Needless to say, I didn’t take many pictures and what I did take , didn’t turn out very well. It was so hot it gave even the nicest flowers giant pimples and bad hair. I took many of the same shots in years past and they all turned out really nice, this year everything was just off and unphotogenically orange. In other years I also spent more time on picture taking too. I would look at the image and say to myself, Hmmm. How about one from a different angle or from beneath or really close up or from the other direction or how about getting some of those into the background?..., this year I just said to myself, Gawd I’m hot. Is it in focus? Good. Okay, moving on.. (Go here for pictures from Larkspur Party 2008)

I didn’t even buy any art. I did however, find the bird house in my soul and if it wasn’t for the fact that it was huge and likely very expensive and even if they were by chance giving it away, I wouldn’t have been able to get it home, but I lurved it all the same:



I did buy some plants, and not only from the garden party! If you were asking yourself when gardening hubris was going to set in, I can tell you. Garden hubris officially got under way at approximately 2:30 pm on June 7. It was inevitable, after all I have some very bloomy flowers in the front and in the garden I have half grown tomatoes, a few fetal squash and my sweet bell pepper plants are very tall and graceful. This is the most success I’ve ever experienced as a gardener and of course it’s gone to my head!. Having mastered vegetables and flowers, I felt I “needed” a new challenge, something else to benefit from my newly green thumb, on the way back from the garden party, I stopped at a very nice garden center to see what they had to challenge me with. Because I am so awesome and I dedicate ten minutes a day watering and weeding and every once in a while I poison the shit out of all of it and then sometimes I fertilize the shit into all of it. I rock urban farming.

I also need to point out that by this time I’ve been wandering around in the heat for longer than might have been deemed healthy and I’m pretty sure you aren’t supposed to leave your brain on “simmer” for too long without adding water, so to be honest, I was not entirely in my right mind. And then I saw them...Raspberry Plants! With genuine raspberries all ready on them! We have raspberries in Marquette! I love raspberries! Oh My Gawd! I could have a little bit of Marquette in my yard!. I was dizzy with joy, or heat stroke, whatever.. I needed those plants, it was just a matter of how much they were and how many I could fit into the back of Minnie.

I started to make plans before I even found a garden person to talk to. I was going to go straight to the dirt store and get some more dirt, and then I’m going to dig holes in the front yard behind the tree and then I’m going to fill the holes in with the dirt store dirt or maybe what I should do, is go to Poverty Barn and get some really big pots , because when I think about it, the ground in my front yard has the consistency of concrete reinforced with tree root re-bar... and just plant the plants in pots in a world of only dirt store dirt, because I totally credit the healthy, verdant state of my garden to the wondrous properties of the dirt store dirt. It’s magic and it is all powerful and without it, I am nothing, I am Tom Joad.

I bought two plants. I was dizzy but I wasn’t dumb. I went home and then to the Dirt Store and they were closed! Bastards! I had to buy Wal-Mart dirt! It can’t be as good as the black gold the Dirt store sells! It’s probably made in China! My hopes for a bumper crop were dashed and I felt all of a sudden, like I had been in the sun for too long.

The Plants 6/7/08