The Briar Philosopher - Hotter that Hammered Hell

There are a lot of ways of saying how hot it is. The above is just one of the more colorful ones.

Hopefully, by the time you’re reading this, it has cooled down a mite. I know the forecast is calling for cooler temperatures starting Wednesday of this week so I’m hoping you are all feeling the relief. A few days without scorching temperatures and sauna level humidity will be nice.

This heatwave has gone on for so long that I’m beginning to think we might as well go ahead and just call it “the weather.” And it hasn’t just been the heat and humidity. It has also, for the most part, been dry. The Boy and I were busy over the last few days toting water to the young trees and the garden. Everything in the garden is mulched with a thick layer of grass clippings so the water gets to be used by the plants for a longer period of time. Also, we hand tote the water in buckets to get the roots watered deep. A sprinkler is just too inefficient for that. We do run the sprinkler or just hose bathe the plants to wash the dust and particulates off their leaves, allowing them to “breathe” better.

I also spent some time spraying the apple trees and some bits of the garden. No, I wasn’t spraying anything icky like herbicides and pesticides. I’ve never used those and I hope I never have to. A couple of the apple trees have been heavily chewed upon by Japanese Beetles and there is some sort of fungus other than the usual cedar apple rust. I made a mixture of strong horsetail tea and added a bit of Murphy’s Oil Soap to the mix. The horsetail is a great antifungal and the Murphy’s takes care of most of the japanese beetles. I’ll have to retreat after the rain but I’m already seeing an improvement on the peppers that were affected. This kind of weather, the heat and humidity, is just such a great environment for fungal plant diseases of all kinds to pop up. I keep horsetail around for this reason. I also use it as a tea as it has a high silica content that helps to strengthen bones. At my age, that’s a thing I have to be worried about. I need to add horsetail to my perennial plants. The only drawback to it is that it can get out of hand and spread more than you want it to. I figure it can’t be any worse than the native giant ragweed so I’ll probably try it. Note that I’m not recommending anyone drink horsetail tea without talking to a physician first. It is not recommended for anyone with kidney disease, for instance. Always check with a doctor who is knowledgeable in plant medicins before starting an herbal treatment of any kind. I do recommend it for your garden and fruit trees though. I have a great deal of experience with that aspect of it.

I’m afraid that while this may well be the hottest summer on record, it won’t be the hottest in years to come. We’re going to have to start adapting our gardening techniques, what we plant, where and when if this keeps up. I’m moving toward heritage varieties of everything I can already. Heritage varieties are known to be more tolerant to weather issues as well as more resistant to disease, including fungus of various sorts. All the tomatoes in our garden, with the exception of one pear tomato plant, are heritage varities and none of them (so far) have been negatively impacted by the fungus that has been attacking the peppers, some of which are growing right beside them.

I guess the philosophy behind all this is about adaptation. Everyone talks about survival of the fittest but they’re mostly talking about strength and intelligence. As Charles Darwin once said. It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive, it is those who are most able to adapt to change. I think one of the reasons we fear change is that we fear we won’t be able to adapt to it but human beings have proven themselves to be resilient when it comes to adaptation. That’s probably the only reason we have survived as a species as long as we have. We don’t have the brute strength of other mammals, nor do we secrete poisons as some reptile and species do. We’re naked and week by comparison to many and yet we’ve survived on this planet for mellinnia. We have done so by learning to adapt to a great number of different environments. Human beings have adapted to most of the environments the earh has to offer, from frigid cold to intense heat. From snow to sand to mountain to swamp, we have found ways to adapt to our enviroment. It has only been a few thousand years since we decided we did not need to live in balance with nature and went to war against her. Since then we have been more about adapting our environment to serve our needs with no thought given to the impact we have on the enviroment that preserves us. Unfortunately it turns out that we are not above the consequences of our actions. We are not above the laws of nature. We knew that for a very long time and I think that deep down most of us still know it. In the coming years we will all have to adapt to all kinds of changes globally. I think we still have it in us, its just that we only tend to respond when there is a crisis. Our early ancestors survived by learning how to predict and forestall, how to gather information about the enviroment in order to live within it’s patterns and still flourish. Time will tell how we faced the coming crisis. Time will tell if we can every trade our arrogance for humility, our pride for versatility. I believe we can and it starts, as most things do, where we live.