starting to flag

It is getting rather hot to garden comfortably.  Twenty-nine degrees somewhere in Essex today, according to Radio 4.  It's the same every year, when we don't have a washout summer.  I look at my diary, relatively blank since it's the off season for lunchtime concerts, and friends tend to be away, and imagine that all of those clear days will be spent productively getting lots done in the garden.  Outside under the sun, with my shirt sticking to my back, work progresses slowly, and I get to the end of the afternoon with a vague sense of surprise that I've accomplished so little.  July and August are simply not productive months.

This is why the gardening days of spring and autumn are so valuable.  Planned winter work can be washed out, or frozen out, and in any case the days are so short, but September and March still bring twelve hours of daylight, and the cooler air puts a bounce in the gardener's step.  The high days of summer see the gardener tottering around at a snail's pace in comparison.

Our pile of old stems and branches waiting to be burnt is turning into a mountain.  First of all the freshly cut green branches needed to dry out so that they'd burn without smoking unduly, and now the surrounding area is so dry, the Systems Administrator is afraid to start a bonfire in case the flames jump to the rest of the heap and start a major conflagration.  It's got to the point where even having the hosepipe to hand on standby, just in case, does not provide sufficient reassurance.

Rain is forecast for tomorrow.  I'm taking this with a pinch of salt, since recent forecasts have mysteriously petered out before reaching us.  Sometimes it has even rained in Colchester, but not a drop by the time you get half way to Clacton.  It sounds as though this time round we will get some rain drops, enough that if you were painting the outside of your house you wouldn't reckon on getting another coat on tomorrow, but whether it will be enough to do the soil any good is another matter.  I ran the hose today on some shrubs in the front garden that were struggling, not trusting the forecast.

The heat has killed the cats' appetites.  You can see this in the reduced pile of tins that goes out for recycling.  Even the chickens are eating less.  I went to fill up their food today, worried that I should have done it yesterday and they might be running out, and the hopper was still three quarters full.  I suppose that hens are not large animals, and they have to spend their lives outdoors or in an unheated hen house.  In the winter they must expend a huge proportion of the energy they consume on just keeping warm.