Hot Weather

The forecast icons on the NOAA.gov point forecast for Abilene are a brassy orange for the rest of the week, meaning 100 degrees F. It is a little early for this frying pan heat, they say; but here it is.

Last week I was in Tampa, Florida, with a group of librarians from colleges associated with Churches of Christ. The temperature was in the 90's and so was the humidity. One of my Abilene friends joked about seeing a sign around a skeleton's neck in a Texas antique shop: "But it's a DRY heat!"

There's this to be said for the century mark in Abilene -- there's usually a breeze, and it does some good to sweat.

Each weekday morning before getting ready for work I spend about 40 minutes out in the garden, watering and weeding, and trying to avoid fire ants. They like to walk along water hoses, and if I am heedless, I pay.

Twice a week it's legal to water the lawn with sprinklers (before 10 am and after 6 pm). The rest of the week we can water anything else using hand-held hoses. So each morning I make the rounds of the pots of verbena and coleus and succulents. My sanseveria, or snake plant, is putting up a bloom stalk which will blossom sweet sticky white tubular flowers reminiscent of the century plant, its cousin. In the twilight this evening I spent some minutes musing about a crescent-shaped clump of Pampas grass in my front yard, holding a hose on it. Year before last it did not bloom. Last year it put up two feathery silver-white plumes. This spring I cut it back, hard, and I am trying to see if watering it will encourage more blooms. The gritty slender leaves spring up like a fountain, so graceful.

The tomatoes are putting on generously and the grapevine has huge clusters of still-hard green grapes. My two moon vines have begun twining up the wire grid I put next to them. They are almost waist high, thinner than a piece of twine.

When I was a little girl, we bought seedling starter kits called Punch N Gro. They were pre-planted trays of vermiculite with clear covers which we used to measure the water and then to turn the tray into a tiny greenhouse. I remember that we started some tiny tomatoes, transplanted them, and then harvested little round red tomatoes and sweet yellow pear-shaped ones.

When I bought my tomatoes to set out early this season, I found some yellow pear-shaped ones. Yesterday I was delighted to see one festooned with two arcs of hard green bulblets, hanging like Christmas ornaments in clusters.

Next week I will be in Chicago for five days for the annual meeting of the American Theological Library Association. I will leave detailed watering instructions for my 20-year-old son!