Writer’s Cramp - Edie Haggard


Thursday, July 9, 2009
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Writer’s Cramp
By Edie Haggard

We aren’t roasted yet, are we?

Here it is June 24, as I write this, and the hellish heat has abated a bit and we didn’t die yesterday. Yesterday was just plain scary - intense heat, the sun like a gong over your head, the humidity suffocating and frightening and you just prayed for it to end.

Maybe you don’t believe in global warming, but I do! A combination of a natural thousands of years cycle aided by our carbon emissions over several decades.
If you subscribe to National Geographic you have seen pictures from various areas of the globe of huge, immovable glaciers melting, Arctic ice floes melting at an alarming rate, trapping polar bears on tiny ice floes where they can’t hunt their food effectively, alpine rock exposed from melting snow and ice where it never melted before.

However, think about where we live, in between the cold North, Kentucky and northward, and the very steamy Deep South, which misses us by about 100 miles. My sister lives in Vicksburg, which is as close to hell as you can get in the summer. The sun on your skin feels like a blowtorch. I don’t know how people there stand it. Thank God for air-conditioning.

When we were growing up in Whitehaven, south of Memphis, we had fans in every room 24/7 but the heat was still suffocating in high summer.

Eventually we got a couple of hefty window air-conditioners and we thanked Daddy and God every day for them.

We have escaped the ravaging storms that tore through DeSoto County and gave us a few minutes of 70 mph winds but no real damage.

To get to the point, if you are deeply watering your shrubs and flowers every few days, you are avoiding being roasted. I think we are still in a little weather trough that protects us from prolonged heat or devastating winds. From my print to God’s ears!

My Endless Summer hydrangea which I have cussed over the last four years because it just sat there, has finally jumped up and put up new growth, many bloom heads and seems headed toward hydrangea Grand Prix. I sprinkled long term fertilizer around it this spring, as I have the last several years, and it finally sat up and took notice. The grass loves it, too! The grass is headed for a quick death!

I bought some smaller type Knock Out roses a couple of weeks ago, set them out, propped up weak stems, watered, prayed. By gum, in these couple of weeks they are now covered in blooms, stems are strong and they smell lovely.

The three gauras, one pink, two white, are thriving despite the armadillos digging around them here and there. Cosmos seed I threw onto some dug-up soil when I planted an azalea have jumped up and I think they are going to make it.

From what I was told, you cannot do anything wrong with cosmos seed. Scratch up the soil, throw the seed down, scatter some dry grass clippings or light mulch over them, water a few times, and there they are!

As a side note on armadillos, a man I talked to in Wal-Mart told me his big dog catches armadillos by the tail and drags them around the yard while his puppy snaps at the snout. A deserved punishment!

The three delphinium I took a chance on are hanging on by a thread. Have kept them watered with the other plants in this sorry flower bed but they are drooping their hefty leaves to their sides protectively. Have blooms on two and am talking to the third big-time so it will put up bloom stalks.

It’s a Pacific Northwest plant and can’t tolerate hot, humid nights but I’m trying anyway.

Let’s be thankful that we are in the hill country where we do get some breezes and not in the Delta lands like south Whitehaven (where I grew up), Southaven, Tunica and Olive Branch where you get hot days and no breeze.

If you fire up your grill in this weather, you will probably get roasted. Just cook those ribs in the oven and stay in the A/C.

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