dog days and no rain

Yes, we're back to the dog days again and again, no rain. It rains everywhere else...but we seem to be on the flight path of spent clouds only. And the cistern is empty again.

I did use nearly 100 gallons (if the label is to be believed!) to only half-fill the wading pool for Granddaughter on Sunday. Even though the water was icy and her lips turned a frightening blue, Granddaughter had a screaming and squeeling good time splashing about.

Then I guess I used the rest of the cistern-water for the pots on the deck and for the vegetable garden.

The heat is beating up on the traditional green lawns of suburbia and some of my friends still continue to water their lawns in an attempt to keep them green. I bluntly told them I refuse to water the grass, and I almost feel guilty for watering the vegetable gardens. Mulch keeps the gardens cooler and retains moisture, but even then, I am concerned about water as I've never been before.

Locally, it isn't very well publicized (at least not as well as I think it should be), because it might impact vacationers and tourism in cottage country, but local lakes and beaches are very often very polluted. The bacteria count, particularly in warm weather like this, goes extremely high and "no swim" warnings are posted on area beaches (and I cannot believe the number of people who ignore them). I'm not certain as to the cause of the pollution, probably a combination of factors, such as the increasing population of homes and cottages on the lake shores, and runoff from farming, which is also expanding in the area, and the increasing de-forestation that continues, particularly around any lakefronts, and the destruction of marshland, which is drained to make more fields for farming available, or filled-in and walled up with rock for more lakefront cottage property. More and more, it seems we are using up natural resources at a pace the earth can no longer sustain.

My friend Mike visited recently. As the conversations bubbled away, he stated that only three issues are important to him (during an election, for example) : health care, education and the environment. I had to laugh, because each issue is so large and intertwined with the others that one wonders "is there anything else?"

Mystery solved:

A large bucket of bulbs that appeared on our backstep last week were given to us by our landlords' dad and step-mom! Thank-you! They apparently had a glut of gladioli and thought we could make use of them. Will I have time to get them into the ground? Will they have time to bloom before frost if we plant them this late? What colours will they be? Anyway, it will be exciting to try--a first time for me, gladioli.

And speaking of colour, Chan's fascinating blog on perceiving colour will have me looking at colours differently again. It reminded me( in a very randomly associative way) of a book on paint colours that I picked up a while ago, Color Palettes, Atmospheric Interiors Using the Donald Kaufman Color Collection, by Suzanne Butterfield. When I read this book, enjoying the photography, I started to realize how light affects our perception of colour, not a new concept of course, but one that I had not noticed in quite this way before picking up this book, inspite of being somewhat aware of the differences in the colour of photographs taken during differents times of the day--dawn, noon, sunset, etc.--and also knowing that some artists choose studios with north-facing windows, for example, preferring how that light allows them to perceive colour.

Somewhere, I dimly remember reading about how Monet used layers of colour to achieve certain effects in his painting, again reinforcing the idea of colour associations changing our perception. I think it was in an American Artist publication. Hmmmnn, let me see.....here it is: Color, How to Pick, Mix, and Paint Color in Oil.

Back to Chan's blog, I really liked her line about "lush peonies" becoming "louche" in the heat of these dog days of summer.