Summer heat sounds like a good book title. I've considered using it a few times but it's already been overused. Actually, it's been used to death so I will avoid it. The summer heat we're experiencing is not at all romantic. It's hot, sticky, and exhausting. Maybe it is romantic, after all. The stretch of days between the first of July and the middle of August used to be called the "dog days of summer." I suspect the younger crowd has forgotten all about that just as they've conveniently forgotten so many other things that don't fit their climate change narrative.
I hear the "news" reporters crying about how it's never been this hot. Really? Temperatures in the low to mid-nineties in July is new? I don't think so, kids. It's the dog days of summer, remember. It's supposed to be hot. And, in case you don't know, locally our hottest day in July happened in 1954 where the mercury reached 105F.
What? You don't get the mercury reference? Read a history book.
The dog days of summer also mark the rising of the dog star, Sirius, in Hellenistic astrology. Hellenistic being what historians usually classify the era from about the first or second century BC to the sixth or seventh century AD. Again, read a book.
This is the time of year when the garden harvest begins. We've been eating a lot of cucumbers this year. I've made a couple of batches of refrigerator pickles, and next year plan to can bread and butter pickles. "Old-fashioned" food without chemical preservatives appeals to me.
I've room for a good-sized garden here on the manor, but there are precautions to be made. We have a lot of deer, rabbit, raccoon, squirrel, and birds around. They can decimate a garden so one must prepare and then be constantly vigilant. My solution will be an electrified fence.
I'm looking forward to growing more of my own veggies. The notion takes me back to my girlhood days and my grandfather's garden. It will keep me connected to him, and that is a good thing.
The Lady of Holly Tree Manor
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