The Heat is On

In his poem “The Cutting Prow,” beat poet Ed Sanders wrote, The last blue iris blooms at / the top of its stalk. Sanders was writing about painter Henri Matisse, but he could have been writing about Uncannery Row.

Spring was merely a fleeting tease at the Row this year, just enough to trigger our urge to plant enough jalapenos to supply the upper Midwest. The iris and climbing roses are a fading memory, and although Solstice/Father’s Day is barely past, Sweltering Summer is already visiting her pent-up wrath upon us. It’s been in the upper-90’s for the past couple of days and has “cooled off” to the upper 80’s today. And after the rain and storms of the last couple weeks, I could throw sage on the patio and the Row would be one big sweat lodge.

The heat is good training for Mom’s and my upcoming July trip to the Yucatan in Mexico. We’ll spend about 10 days visiting my expat brother, exploring ruins, and dipping our pasty-white feet in the Caribbean. Their daily temps can be in triple digits this time of year, so we may do a lot more dipping than exploring. As part of my training, I’ve also been brushing up on essential Spanish: Quiero una cerveza oscura, por favor. Donde está el baño? Lléveme al aire acondicionado, ahora.

The peacocks are feeling the heat, too. They find a shady spot of bare dirt, usually in one of my gardens, and hunker down for most of the day. They will sometimes head for the dirt floor of the loafing shed and kick up a nice dust bath, which probably helps them fend off our new gnat population. Two of the three nesting hens are spooking around the edges of the farmyard with brand new baby chicks, so now we are 19. We named the new babies (two groups of three) Wynken, Blynken and Nod, and Larry, Moe, and Curly. Any minute now, “crazy peacock lady” pinfeathers will start poking out of my ample armflaps.

In spite of the recent rain and 100% humidity, the heat means I have to water almost daily, while the dogs stand like garden statues in their patio baby pool. And I need to tackle the flower beds, which have turned into tropical jungles of lambs quarters and creeping whatever. It was too dry to weed for a while, then too wet. But now it’s too hot. So really, I only have two choices: Hide in the AC and knit up something wonderful with the luscious white alpace yarn I’ve been saving, or turn on Animal Planet for the dogs & parrots, and head to the beach with frozen water bottles, SPF 9000, and a floaty. Ah, Summer.