Heatwave

We're having a heatwave. A tropical heat wave. That is the full extent of my recollection of the song, but those two lines will be in my head for the rest of the day. Be grateful that I chose to simply write out those lyrics rather than posting a video of the Irving Berlin song performed by either Marilyn Monroe or Ethel Merman (my preference). 

I feel cooler just looking at it

We are currently having a heatwave. A tropical heatwave (sorry). It's supposed to hit 107 F (41.7 C) today! The best Tuesday Morning Gardening Cocktail for such a climatic phenomenon is clearly the gin and tonic. Gin and tonic provides the added bonus of preventing malaria (scientifically, a dubious claim with modern tonic, but one that I perpetuate none-the-less). Though to be fair, malaria isn't a huge concern anyway because Austin falls out of the malaria zone around the equator by thousands of miles.

This blog is nothing if not extremely useful (if you're in doubt just see yesterday's concise explanation of my birdbath). Today, I would like to remind everyone to dead-head their roses. I'll admit that I am somewhat shocked at what a big difference this makes. You'll often hear rose people (similar to cat people but roses don't poop in the house) say that dead-heading is important, but I was skeptical that it really mattered. I can now say after dead-heading on a fairly regular basis lately, the roses do bloom noticeably more.

Gin and tonic improves your aim as you dead-head
(Photo credit: Dr. Travis B. White)

Here is me dead-heading this morning. It's really pretty simple. Mix a drink (shirtless). Take your clean snippers and snip each spent bloom (shirtless). It is important to clean (shirtless) whatever implement you use for cutting off the spent blooms with bleach, or some similarly noxious solution, because roses are the most disease-prone plant I've ever heard of.

This is one of those rare days when I actually have a lot to blog about, but I think I've carried on enough for one morning. It's always nice to hold a little something in reserve for days where I have nothing to blog about.