h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

We're in the second day of an expected five-day heat wave (i.e., the daytime temps go over 90 degrees every day). When I walked over to 7-11 to get a Sunday paper, the sweat was getting my eyes and stinging them.

But my plants are loving it. The beans have started blooming like crazy. The zucchini plants doubled in size in just four or five days. The coreopsis are blooming, and the coneflowers are getting tall and starting to open. Even the sunflowers are forming buds. We'll see a few sunflower blossoms within a few days. They're not nearly as big as the gigantic annual sunflowers you're used to, but these are shade-loving perennials that put Cosmos to shame.

The roses have had their run, and are forming rosehips now. The ones that are supposed to bloom all season are resting from their exertions. I expect them try again in a few weeks.

Normally I would be very jealous reading something like this but we here in Scotland are actually in the middle of a similar heatwave - I can't believe I am actually having to water the garden! My little yellow rambling rose is still flowering happily and the everlasting sweet peas have gone berserk. Today I started trying to prune the pyracanthus hedge as the blackbirds have now managed to get their eggs hatched and the fledglings have survived long enough to leave the nest - at the third attempt. Yesterday the thermometer in the shady back garden was showing 30.9C at 6:30 pm (I can't remember what that is in Fahrenheit).

I love yellow roses and everlasting peas. You have a nice garden!

There are everlasting peas across the street from me. They've been there forever, and they are a joy to see every year.

For the first time ever, we've a hose-pipe ban.

We can water the garden if we want, but not using a hose. We will have to lug water cans around if we decide to do it.

We haven't got a hosepipe ban yet but I tend to use the watering can anyway mainly because it's too much trouble to get the hosepipe out of the cupboard and we only have a small garden.

I'm always impressed by how fast the sweet peas grow - they must be around 10feet high now but my favourite plant is a wild orchid (a common or purple-spotted) that decided to grow in the front garden and is getting bigger each year that it comes up.

Things that come up wild are called volunteers. They're great to have. .

In that case, I have a whole army of volunteers in my garden.

Most of my 'volunteers' are chickory. Which isn't quite as popular as during the war years. Rain, sun, drought or flood - danged things flourish.

I love the blue flowers, but I have to get up before noon in order to see them in bloom. They close up promptly in the afternoon.

Ditto on the flowers.

Besides endive, I also sometimes use the more robust roots in soups or stews.

I'm going to mix garlic powder with chili powder and dishwashing detergent to be mixed with water and applied as a rabbit-deterrent.

with that

Let me know if it keeps away also

It is so hot here Paul for several weeks and it does not look like it is going to end. It has been two months since there has been any significant rain. There have been promises of rain has evaporated and I have even start doing rain dances, in the vain hope of making it rain.

Apparently we're in the middle of an international heatwave:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/weather/topstories/red-hot-planet-all-time-heat-records-have-been-set-all-over-the-world-during-the-past-week/ar-AAzyIto?ocid=spartandhp

This must be Motherwell's first international news mention

Eventually, the drought must break in the watershed of the Colorado River.

...preferably with simultaneous monsoonal and Hudson's bay weather fronts colliding about the middle of it.

I find that even on the hottest days, I can go into my shady back yard and feel comfortable. I spread a large towel on the ground and sit on it with a book or two. The view is nice: the wildflower garden behind my front porch. There are sunflowers taller than I am, asters almost as tall, various coneflowers and Blackeyed Susans and Jacks-in-the-pulpit, etc. There are potted violets and roses and coneflowers. Some day they may find permanent places in the ground, but the dappled shade here seems to agree with them, so no hurry to make a change. There's a very large pot with an American Plum Sapling in it. Now that the tree has adjusted to its new home, it's putting out some new foliage. I take that as a good sign.