Gardening in a Burning World
And the worst is yet to come…
Heat-related deaths have steadily increased over the last few years from 1,563 in 2021, to 1,702 in 2022, and, provisionally, 2,297 deaths in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
All spring, I felt like I was bracing myself for summer and summer just kept on taking its time and it was groovy.
And that’s not just me looking back at the spring with nostalgia after a couple of 100-degree days. In my journal entries, I’m recording daily highs of 84 in mid-May. I have to repeat that for sheer pleasure: 84 in May.
Here in Upstate South Carolina—just upgraded by the USDA from a frost hardiness of 7B to 8A— that’s not just mild—it’s this side of heaven. Usually we start seeing 80s at spring break!
Anyway, I had mid-May and end-of-June business trips on the schedule this year and I took them with bated breath. “When I get home,” I thought each time with dread, “it will be summer.” Dread because I really don’t like summer gardening—the sweating and the bugs and the way the rains turn off like a tap in July and you’re fighting soil with roughly the consistency of a brick.
It turned out I was half-right. Late May was a lot like early May with a gradually warming trend. I kept up with my weeding in late May-early June. The past two weeks since my return from Mississippi, however? Different story. These roughly fourteen days have been hell.
We had our first temperature spikes—to the high 90s, low 100s—while I was gone and, without that second set of hands to help with the watering, up to a quarter of our potted nursery stock just … cooked. Not to mention, out in the field, the beans I planted from seed for a July harvest, the garlic I waited too late to harvest … cooked.
Also cooked? My energy levels. In May, I’d been rising with the dawn, working for hours in the shaded beds, avoiding the slant of the sun, staying ahead of the heat.
I can’t do that any more. Physically, I’ve hit the wall.
Seeing a headline like this one from the July 10 Washington Post would usually be enough to jolt me back into gratitude…
After all, it’s bad here, but we’re not a concrete island in a desert like the cities of the west.
When I look out my back window, for example, I see forest—actually, forest surrounds us on three sides. The heat island effect does not really apply.
But it still gets hot. So when I look at weather maps like this one from Axios forecasting what’s in store over the next few days, my spirit quails within me… Lordy. Tuesday…
The water bill is going to be the biggest we’ve had in years.
Sigh, here’s something pretty to look at until we meet again.
