summer memories... it's hot (otherwise known as ya gotta laugh to cope)

the past week has been hot. sometimes over 40 degrees C... my poor friend Pam who lives in South Australia has been battling heat of 45 degrees C, every day.. that is around 120F !!! too hot for anyone. I try to remember the wise words of the elderly couple that i met while on my trip.. that this has all happened before and that it will rain but when the scare mongerers of the press keep carrying on that it is the driest since way back when... it is hard to stay positive..... i wonder about the first white Australians and how they must have felt when the ship arrived in January way back then... they must have thought they had died and gone to hell...... in the mean time, I open verandah windows trying to catch a slight breeze that might blow through Woodford... (I know air-conditioning is not at all good for the greenhouse... but geez, I am using it and I am sure my carbon foot print has doubled in the past week..)

It is times like this, when the heat is relentless that I cannot love Australia. Matter of fact, I don't love much at all. I could be a woman from the Old Testament.. there is a lot of gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands going on here at Inglewood. I sit and melt. And I water my garden. Illegally. And I don't care. I don't care if the water police come and put me in jail. The man across the road is allowed to wash his bright, new shiny car any day of the week, at any time. But gardens are only allowed to be watered 2 days a week.. and then, only a few hours at a time. Yesterday was not a watering day... but the rebel in me watered my plants. When the zucchini is wilting, the citrus are struggling and the daphne looks just about dead... well I just watered. I will not, I refuse to, let my garden die. And as I watered, in a kind of meditative state... cause that is what happens when I garden...... I remembered my childhood summers and how hot they were... but it didn't seem to phase me back then. we kinda just accepted what was.
We put on our cossies (an australian term for swimming costumes or bathers), Dad would connect the sprinkler up and we would run through it, screaming as the icy cold water touched our hot skin... and we would keep doing that til mum came out with a home-made ice block.. then sit under the berry tree, licking and sucking quickly before it melted away.

(my sister and I at the beach in 1961.. I am the little girl in blue)
Sometimes we were even lucky enough to go to the beach. That was a trek. Mum would pack up a picnic lunch.. lots of cold drinks. And of we would go in our old car. A two hour drive in the heat. But oh, how it was worth it.

We would sleep under the stars when it was hot at night. Mum would get a blanket for us, put it out on the front lawn under the eucalypt tree and we would lie there in the heat of the night, looking up at the vast Australian sky... no tent, no blanket. Not worrying about spiders or other night time insects. I wonder if there were mossies? there would have been I am sure, but they didn't worry us........
coming back to the present moment.. I continue to water...wishing I was someone else. Living somewhere else..... I read other blogs and sometimes i wish I were living that life...... does anyone else do that?

I know I am lucky with the life I have. I know it. I have food on my table. a gorgeous home. wonderful family. I am free and i am healthy..... but sometimes when I read blogs like Corey's Tongue in Cheek (tongue in cheek), I wish I were somewhere else, someone else....... oh lord, I just want to escape from this heat........