Heat collapse

[igenlode]

The only good thing about working for five hours in temperatures of 98F is that it makes returning home to temperatures of 'only' 80+ degrees feel pleasantly cool... According to the thermometer strip in my bathroom, my body temperature is currently 102, which under any other circumstances would count as running a fever!

The first thing I had to do was fill and carry all my water carriers out to the plants. The basil and pak choi had collapsed, as had the heritage tomatoes, although the latter may have been as much to do with the strong hot wind as anything else -- they are not really staked or tied, and are getting too tall to manage without. Surprisingly, the Demon Red chillies which were positioned between the basil and pak choi seemed to be fine. They are now quite definitely coming into flower, although still only about six inches high :-)

The symptoms of extreme heat are, weirdly enough, remarkably reminiscent of those of hypothermia: slowness, clumsiness and fumbling, brain fog that means you can't make intelligent decisions, and generally walking around like a zombie... I kept putting water over my bare arms and shoulders, but it just evaporated off in no time at all because both the air and my body temperature were too high -- sitting here at lower temperatures I'm actually covered in visible sweat for the first time. Previously it just didn't get a chance to pool anywhere except my groin!

Edit: I repotted the basil (three seedlings in one pot) once it had recovered from its collapse. It was so pot-bound that it's really not surprising it flopped -- there can have been very little actual soil, as opposed to root, in there! There was no separating the plants, so I just ripped them apart, with each chunk presumably containing a fair proportion of severed roots originally belonging to the others...

Comments

[sallymn]

Someone pointed out that for a lot of Australia that has those high temperatures (and did before aircon), it is dry heat, which is a whole different ball game from what I understand is going on now in the Northern Hemisphere. Humidity is much, much worse.

We do have evaporative airconditioning, try not to use it unless really needed (a fan with a wet town draped in front of it is surprisingly helpful) but we do have it oh yes. Mind you, at the minute it is by our standards freezing (drops to minus 1-3 at night) and we never get used to that.

And yes, I would say you're right about the "feckless and lazy" - I may love the song Mad Dogs and Englishmen, but I do quite clearly see its dated prejudices and it sums this up.

[igenlode]

Yes, it's the humidity that does it for India...
We're not used to thinking of Britain as particularly humid by comparison, but apparently it is, relatively speaking, because of all the sea. (Mind you, I've just been looking up humidity figures, and the tables inform me that the maximum expected temperature in Southern England in July is 71F -- not 98F!)

"Mad Dogs & Englishmen" is poking fun at the English (it's something of a national sport; see also Coward's "The Stately Homes of England" and Flanders & Swann's "Patriotic Prejudice") for behaving in ways that everyone else finds completely lunatic ;-)

I was thinking of the traditional scorn of the Lillois for the Méridional, or the Ligurian for the Sicilian, or the Pathan for the Tamil, or even the dour Scot for the soft-living Sassenach. The English have customarily scorned the southern Europeans for their leisurely lunch-hours, their fits of temperament and their elastic approach to appointments (manana is real). But actually the idea of everybody sitting around snoozing and not getting anything done (or alternatively flying off the hande and yelling at each other) makes a lot of sense in conditions where it's hot enough at midday to make any exertion almost intolerable...