Fried flora

This is going to be fairly short. Lots to do today.

A dentist appointment to get a replacement retainer. The one I received (at a cost of $1000) in January after my front tooth was extracted is proving increasingly annoying and getting smaller. Bits have cracked and split, forming sharp edges that stick in my gums or my tongue, so must be clipped off. 

It’s smaller and a bit looser than it was when I took this photo in January, so eating with it can be a pain. I just hope they don’t expect me to cough up another grand. For that amount of money the bloody thing should remain intact until December when I finally get the implant. (“All I want for Christmas is my new front tooth.” Feel free to sing along.

After that (boo, hoo) it’s my last walk with Georgie before Joe dognaps her and drives her off to Winnipeg. Yes, okay, Georgie is actually his dog, so technically it isn’t a dognapping, but still. A month (at least) without Georgie seems like an awfully long time. 

Today’s subject is the damage wrought by heatwaves.

If you know I live on an island off the west coast of Canada, you’ll probably know that we had a pretty unprecedented heat wave recently. 

Temperatures in a small town called Lytton reached nearly 50 degrees. This is unheard of. This is Death Valley temperatures, not British Columbia. Most of Lytton tragically disappeared as a result of a wildfire that followed in the immediate aftermath of the heatwave. A community nearly wiped out by climate change.

The damage I experienced is nothing by comparison, so I need to keep some perspective.

When the heatwave hit, my butterfly bush was about to blossom. By now it should look like it did this time last year.

Although I conscientiously watered it every day throughout the heatwave, instead of looking like that, it looks like this.

The heatwave completely fried the poor butterfly bush. 

Some weeks later there are tiny new leaves appearing, so I don’t think it’s dead, but it will take a long time to recover. If it actually does. Poor bush. Poor butterflies, who won’t be getting a special treat on my deck this year. (At least there are blue lobelias in the window boxes which I know butterflies like.)

I thought the heatwave was going to do for the hydrangea as well. Despite all the water I was giving it, some of the leaves were starting to turn brown and a lot of the flower buds did get cooked.

Happily not all of them.

And, as a nice little bonus, the flowers are not the blue suggested by the card that came with the hydrangea, but this lovely mauve with blue tinges.

Like me, the woman at the garden shop thought, when I told her about the heat damage, that it would have gone the other way – that it would have been the hydrangea that didn’t make it. Also like me (somewhat unhelpfully so), she wasn’t sure whether I should prune the butterfly bush right back or simply pluck off the dead leaves and hope for the best. I’m opting for the latter. I’ll let you know how it goes.