A Pickled Python
07/02/2016 11:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaThe serpent had such grand plans for the day. There were so many options to choose from. There was the party in Hyde Park famous for its Cthulhu trees or the monthly morning meeting of the local Nanowrimo mob who like to squiggle during the other 11 months of the year followed by a visit to my favourite lunatic asylum which is now an arts centre or yet another Fringe festival show or just slinking or lurking around their gorgeous venues and there are just so so many to choose from.
For the less ambitious there was the local shopping centre's Chinese New Year celebrations.
But all of these were laid low by the evil geeks in the Bureau of Meteorology and their grand plans to impress the new boss above with a stinking sizzling whole week of 40+.
Presently it is the pleasant dry kind of heat that just sizzles you to a crisp rather than makes you murderous while you melt in a stinking sticky pool of sweat but with the thermometer expected to stay above 25 all week then a whole bunch of sleepless nights are on the agenda for those folks without air conditioning.
As long as the icky sticky humidity stays away, the heat wave will be just about bearable for a pot bellied python such as Izzie but it is the weeds that are the worry. Been so so proud of the achievement of planting 15 trees since May and managing to keep all except one alive and well all through December and January. But even watering both mornings and evenings over the next week will not be sufficient to guarantee their survival. Once the air temperature goes over 35c most plants get stressed out and go into survival mode and a whole week at 40 is going to be way too much for some of them.
It was just such a heat wave in February of 2012 that was the final straw for a big fat macadamia tree that had been happily living in the Lair for some 10 years or so and had been producing nuts for 3 of those years. I had a proper funeral for the poor thing and used its remains as the basis for a new nut tree patch and vowed to never again let a tree die on my watch.
While lurking in the garden this evening with a glass or two of red and some cheese and crackers, I realized that it was exactly 25 years since a certain significant serpent anniversary. If I had remembered earlier in the day i would have more likely made the effort to slink down to the local shops to buy some brie and a bottle of inky black Wynns Cabernet to celebrate "Dark Mark Day" which to the outside world looked rather like a failed suicide attempt but in a strange way marked the first stirrings of the inner serpent after many years of being neglected and ignored in favour of the fickle gods of reason and logic.
But maybe it is a good thing to spend less time in the past and more in the here and now even if it is a sizzling stinking 40 something.
For the less ambitious there was the local shopping centre's Chinese New Year celebrations.
But all of these were laid low by the evil geeks in the Bureau of Meteorology and their grand plans to impress the new boss above with a stinking sizzling whole week of 40+.
Presently it is the pleasant dry kind of heat that just sizzles you to a crisp rather than makes you murderous while you melt in a stinking sticky pool of sweat but with the thermometer expected to stay above 25 all week then a whole bunch of sleepless nights are on the agenda for those folks without air conditioning.
As long as the icky sticky humidity stays away, the heat wave will be just about bearable for a pot bellied python such as Izzie but it is the weeds that are the worry. Been so so proud of the achievement of planting 15 trees since May and managing to keep all except one alive and well all through December and January. But even watering both mornings and evenings over the next week will not be sufficient to guarantee their survival. Once the air temperature goes over 35c most plants get stressed out and go into survival mode and a whole week at 40 is going to be way too much for some of them.
It was just such a heat wave in February of 2012 that was the final straw for a big fat macadamia tree that had been happily living in the Lair for some 10 years or so and had been producing nuts for 3 of those years. I had a proper funeral for the poor thing and used its remains as the basis for a new nut tree patch and vowed to never again let a tree die on my watch.
While lurking in the garden this evening with a glass or two of red and some cheese and crackers, I realized that it was exactly 25 years since a certain significant serpent anniversary. If I had remembered earlier in the day i would have more likely made the effort to slink down to the local shops to buy some brie and a bottle of inky black Wynns Cabernet to celebrate "Dark Mark Day" which to the outside world looked rather like a failed suicide attempt but in a strange way marked the first stirrings of the inner serpent after many years of being neglected and ignored in favour of the fickle gods of reason and logic.
But maybe it is a good thing to spend less time in the past and more in the here and now even if it is a sizzling stinking 40 something.
