I'm meeelting, meeeeelting!

I've had a pretty good life, weather-wise, these past two years. I enjoy the mild, maybe-a-bit-rainy-at-first summers of western Washington, and then I move to Utah in time for their beautifully warm, sunny fall and sunny/snowy winter. I don't have to deal with the 3 months of winter rain in Washington, or the hot summers in Utah.

So for the first time in, oh, eight years I'll be experiencing heat this summer, and I got my first real taste of it today. Here's the thing. I work in greenhouses. Old ones that are as much a part of the history of Longwood as they are a place to grow stuff. There isn't a lot of air movement in them. Greenhouses are designed to hold in heat, which is wonderful in the winter. It's just horrible in the summer. One of the greenhouses got up to 110 degrees Fahrenheit today.



By the way, here are my standards in training!
 The twins are Hamelias and the tall one (below) is a yellow Chrisanthemum.
I'm not sure how I'm bringing them on the plane home. . . :)



I'm growing them in a greenhouse we call 'the Church' (for it's shape)
It's where we grow most of the standards, which
I think is very fitting :)

And who knows what the adjusted temperature is after factoring in the humidity. That's probably what scares me the most about this summer. Humidity. It changes everything. It can take a happy little temperature and either plunge it into the frigid depths of nasty cold, or work it up to a boiling rage. But I am going to do it. I will survive this summer humidity, just like I'm going to survive four more months of Jerusalem heat :)

Bring it on Pennsylvania summer.

"I Start To Complain When There's No Rain. . . "

It hasn't rained in a while. But was rainy at one point a week or two ago - the wonderful, cats and dogs kind of rain that would drench you straight through if you were out in it :) So of course I dropped everything I was doing and sat on the porch to watch.

Now that it's been several days since precipitation, I'm starting to get antsy. And today as I was walking along in Philly, contemplating all the lovely things about rain ( the smell, not needing to wrestle with the hose to water my garden, cooler temperatures, a chance to use the word "petrichor", etc) I remembered I'd taken pictures so I could post about how happy I was that it was raining! So here they are. From my front/back porch to you:

That tree in the middle ( the big awesome one) is my favorite. It's big and green, and looks like the perfect climbing tree. As soon as I get over my fear of ticks I may just climb it :) It's a Castanea sativa, or chestnut tree. The edible kind, if I'm correct. Not Aesculus hippocastanum, or horse chestnut. That one's definitely not edible.

Just look at how beautifully green and cool everything seems. . . *sigh*. I suppose this is good for me, learning to live in a hot place. . . not that I'll be in a desert place for Fall semester or anything crazy like that. . . ;)

So until this (above) happens again, I'll be depending on this (below),

It was rescued from our closet by my roommate - yay for finding and using old stuff and not paying lots of money! It makes me think of the Brave Little Toaster. . . which is only minimally creepy. . . not creepy enough for me  not to use it :)