Our hot here in Berkeley is only the upper seventies, though the greenhouse gets too hot to be in by ten thirty... but the cacti love it and the pachypodiums are in bloom so I just enjoy it in the morning.

My break of the day was to go up to UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens and take a look at the Amorphophallus titanum in bloom. It is just starting to fade, no stench today. Big bloom.

The "African Hill" at the garden has several Aloe polyphylla in bloom, which I found more interesting than the Titan Arum. A lovely Aloe that I wish was less rot prone... So many wonderful aloes! Of course now I am thinking of placing another seed order with Silverhill Seeds in South Africa....

-Hap

Here is a link that might be useful: UCB Botanical Gardens

Sounds like a desert. Here they are again threatening us with possible highs near 80F. We'll see.

Hi, 100 today in Nevada City, CA. Dosent get that hot very often. I was in Mesa AZ on Tuesday, my niece drove us to the airport at 6 PM it was 116 then. ( yikes)

I was in AZ with my son, we went to freshman orientation at NAU. I visited a beautiful nursery there in Flagstaff, called Warners. It was very nice but very hot! I wondered if I could ever get used to working there.

Here in central France it was 97F (36C) in the shade here yesterday. Seems positively cool compared to 120F! Watering on the nursery becomes more difficult as soon as we go into the 90's - the shade tunnel is the only place where its bearable to work during the day.

Inside our old stone house remains relatively cool - around 22C (72F) if we keep the shutters shut during the day. No need for air-con here.

It's no where near as bad as the famous canicule (heatwave) of 2003 where we had a total of about 3 weeks with temperatures around 110F and we were watering the entire nursery by hand. Character building stuff. Thousands of people died in that heatwave - mainly old folk living on their own in the big cities.

Yesterday was sunny in the high 80s w/98 percent humidity in NJ. We call those HHH days--hazy, hot & humid.

I remember those back east humid days ... those can be tuff .. also I remember the bugs .. nats .. green flys .. eeks.

Good Day ...

We always knew you were hot Mohave.

The heat wave that you are experiencing is also showing up in Northern California.

Last week it was the high 90's and low 100's in Napa Valley where we were installing 26 - 60 to 90 year old Olive trees up a steep driveway.
I wonder what kind of transplant success rate we will get with those trees ?

We also have a project being built on the water concurrently and it was like paradise.
Unfortunately we will be wrapping that project up and moving most of the crew to Napa where we will be building over a thousand sq. feet of rock walls.

Last week my partner and I were strategizing how we can make working conditions more comfortable for the crew ( especially after working on the coastal water ) .
We have designed a simple shade cloth structure that will be outfitted with a water mister system that will be placed over the area where we will be setting up the stone walls.

I just saw a refrigerated cooler at CostCo yesterday and think I will go back and purchase it today and stock it with those gel pack ice packs so the guys can wrap the iced gel packs around their necks while working.

In the past when it has gotten hot like this and I was laboring in the field I would wrap ice cubes in my bandanna around my neck.
Of course it looked like I had just come from a wet T-shirt contest after about 5 minutes of wear , which was fine about 25 pounds ago, but these days I don't think it would look so good. ... not zesty.

It's only supposed to be 92 or 93 here tomorrow, but the heat index will be 103. Yuck!

Since most of my maintenance clients are on vacation, I think I'll start at 6 tomorrow (I don't use power tools for weeding and deadheading). And hope it's been too hot for the weeds to grow!

Yesterday's high was 124 and the low was 92! It's 'only' 115 today.

Here it got into the upper 80s to middle 90s here and there, the last month. It's supposed to be in the 90s in the middle of the state this week, but with the effect of 100+ degrees F because of the humidity. Here it's not the heat that kills ya, it's the dewpoint. When air humidity is 80-100%, sweat doesn't evaporate from your skin, so you vitually stew in your own juices. There is no cooling effect like you'd get from sweating in dry heat.

I work outdoors on Fridays and Saturdays in my horticultural jobs, and if there's a hot spell I'm literally am drenched in sweat. I have to put a bandana around my forehead to keep the streams from running down my face, and drink about a gallon of water an hour, supplemented by electrolytes.

Blah.

Yes climate change is here to stay ( though it is not a pressing/urgent issue according to Bush).
We have had the warmest winter that anyone can remember over here.Its in the dead of winter but it feels like summer, impatiens still looking good and flowering right out in the open. Usually they are totally dead in late May or early June.