The Fairweather Gardener - We're Having a Heatwave

We've had absolutely no rain and some very hot weather for the past six weeks at least. This could be described as the ideal summer, but it's far too dry for farmers and too dry for most UK gardens. Temperatures in the high 20's C have been recorded most days but one notable Sunday, the first of July, when the met office admitted it could be 32 outside, that was in the shade on my patio.  I put out a cheap thermometer and it shot up to 39 in the sun. That's over 100 degrees in old money! Even the cats stayed indoors.

So what's in flower? More than I expected, there are daisies and day lilies, miniature roses and oregano, clematis and thunbergia - also known as Black-eyed-Susan! Grown from seed, the marigolds and viola are just coming out. Also from seed, nasturtiums in pots were doing fine until the small white butterflies found them, now they are a scene of devastation, I think the caterpillars are running out of leaves. Should I take pity and transfer them to the remaining nasturtiums under the apple tree? And I have numerous pots of vivid, gorgeous red geraniums  - yes I know I'm meant to call them zonal pelargoniums, but I refuse!

My small lawn is completely brown and crispy, not a single blade of green. The plus side is that I don't have to mow it, I expect it will come back once we have some significant rain; this will happen at some stage, we are in England not the Sahara and grass rhizomes are very tough. The other plus is the ground elder has vanished. I kept mowing it in the lawn and rooting it out in the beds but it's an everlasting task. I don't suppose it's gone forever, some roots will survive even in bone dry soil, but I'm pleased for now that it's reduced so much.

The interior of the compost bin is dry and dusty, even though it's in the shade. The tiny fruit flies which normally swarm up in a miasma when I open the lid to tip in kitchen waste are growing sluggish. Slugs and snails have hunkered down, though some are still alive enough to know when I've watered the cucumbers in their gro-bag.

For over a week the sun was too much for those cucumbers, every day they wilted even though I was watering three times a day. I even tried shading them with a light-filtering parasol but it didn't really help. We've had a few small crisp cucumbers from them, though the skins are tough, and a couple more still on the plant. I haven't grown cucumbers before, a neighbour gave me two seedlings. They're short cucumbers and taste very good, but a lot of effort and a lot of water for ten small cucumbers, don't think I'll bother again.  Prickly pears might be a more appropriate crop for the weather! Is this continuous hot, dry weather a sign of climate change? Well  one swallow doesn't make a summer and one summer doesn't make global warming, but overall the signs aren't good.

Dada Baroness - it's her birthday!

Today is the birthday of the utterly fabulous and more than slightly bonkers Dada Baroness (1874-1927)  Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven. She has been largely written out of the history of the Dada movement by male chroniclers. She probably invented performance art in 2015-16 on the streets of New York. She was a painter, poet and creator of art objects. Her poetry has recently been published, her art is almost all lost.

Portrait of Elsa by Theresa Bernstein 1918

Elsa was friend/lover/collaborator of many more famous people in the dada period including Marcel Duchamp, Berenice Abbott, Man Ray and Djuna Barnes. She wasn't really a Baroness - a bigamous marriage to a dispossessed Baron lasted only a few months. She lived in poverty much of her adult life. There's a fuller account of Elsa below -

https://sugswritersblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-dada-baroness-elsa-von-freytag.html