Bad Weather

Well, we had the longest hot spell on record in Victoria last week. In my mathematics 45C turns into 112F, which is hot. The air con that we bought the winter before last kept me at a cool 27 inside, but that was so I could watch as my garden just frizzled away. There is now enormous damage everywhere I look, but it's too early to trim all the burnt bits off. They will have to wait until autumn, just in case we get more.

Anticipating some summer heat, the week before I pressed my man into building me a shade cloth sail to stretch out over the veggie garden and that is not so destroyed. Instead that was ruined by my feeding the plants blood and bone and Dynamic Lifter the month before, not knowing he had mixed in super phosphate to throw all on the paddocks. That literally burned holes in the leaves and annihilating some all together. This year's veggies are struggling now. The zucchinis, which are usually producing more that I need are just a few sprouting husks.

Time to let go.

By the end of the heat our first deliberately lit forest fire took off up the line near Mirboo North, so my man was called away to help. He has been delivering fuel to the dozer drivers carving out containment lines around it and has been gone for four days, back tonight for a rest, then probably off again.

Twenty nine homes were lost, so the police are very keen to find the fire bug. I have often remarked that it would be good to put him into old fashioned stocks in the middle of the town affected and let the townspeople deal with him. Public humiliation seems like a good tool to me.

Yesterday we had a cool front move up from the west, bringing with it lightning strikes but no rain, which has started 29 new spot fires. No wind yet which can fan them into major problems.

Our summer is usually very focused on what fires are where, as my man comes and goes with the flow.

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Needing some human contact, rather that up here talking to the poodles for days on end, I took myself off to see 'Gran Torino', produced, directed and acted by Clint Eastwood. He's a 78 year old wrinkly now, and there is talk that this will be his last movie, but this one was a good one. He plays a dried up, grumpy old bloke who fought in the Korean War, so doesn't like Asians, and he has a whole household of them next door. Political correctness goes out the window as he calls up every unsavoury term he can think of to describe them.

He does the grumpy really well, and there are flashes of 'Dirty Harry' and other classics from his past. I enjoyed it. I heard him interviewed about it a few weeks back, and he is such a cool guy.