The Sun is Acting Up

With all the incessant heat this summer, the one bright spot is the Sun.

My interest in astronomy has led me to articles about our most important star.  Frankly, I had no idea that it could carry on so.  Looks like a source of global warming to me, but I'm no scientist.

NASA has lots of websites, so I don't have to invest in a solar telescope or a solar filter for the 'scope I have.  That's great, because as a shade tree person,  I can't see how I could manage it.

So, there are all these cool satellites orbiting the Sun, sending back fabulous pictures and videos.

There are even online tutorials for us Sun dummies to learn a thing or two.  Everything that I wanted to know but was afraid to ask about Coronal Mass Ejections has been carefully explained, with pictures.

The news is that the Sun is not only in an extremely active year for sunspots, zero days without one this year, but is "ramping up" for lots more next year.

Stuck inside in the endless heat advisory days, I've become addicted to spaceweather.com, checking every few hours to see the drama unfolding.  At night, excited by the solar activity, I go outside  and look  for auroras excited by the solar activity.

I believe that all those cameras orbiting  the Sun are contributing to the sunspots, solar flares and CME's. It's just like when young movie stars get surrounded with more press coverage than is good for them.  They can't handle all that public scrutiny and flip out.

Next, we'll have media polls tabulating which sunspot was the biggest disappointment, or the best fireworks display.  I don't see it going so far as a trend toward young mothers naming their babies AR-1520, but you never know.

Across the River and Around the Bend

All the heat has turned me into a lizard-like creature.  I come out in the early morning and then hide from the sun until evening.

The grandkids came for a few days and we all waded across the river.  I regret to say that I was not leading the pack, being a wimp where deep water is concerned.  I can swim, but only well enough to not drown immediately.

Carolyn, age fifteen, led the way and coaxed me and her mom, Izzy, to cross the Grand River.  Jason and Molly are good little swimmers. We all wore shoes for the rocky beach, which turned to lovely sand halfway across.

It was never deeper than my waist, and I am a short Grammie. Whale rock doesn't look so much like a whale when the water is this low.

The water was warm, with refreshing cool currents toward the far side, where it was shady.  Izzy and I walked upriver on the sandy shore, going around the bend. The kids appeared to be swimming in the deep middle of the river.

However, when we told them to stand on the bottom, to allay our fears that it was quite dangerous, we had to laugh.

It was getting dusk by then, so we took our sandy selves up to the house and had BBQ'd hamburgers.

When it got dark, I got out the telescope and showed them Saturn and M7, a beautiful open cluster of stars, above the Cat's Eyes in Scorpio.  They loved the Butterfly Cluster, M6. Now they can understand when I mention that I was stargazing until two in the morning.  Once some of the sky goodies are found, we stargazers want more and more.  They could see individual stars in the Milky Way, which was a big surprise for them.  Saturn's rings are a huge draw for getting people hooked on astronomy. People can only resist it until they look in a telescope, and then they are goners.

At the very least, I now have others who know what I'm talking about when I say M7.

Midsummer Blues

The same force that causes me to get into a gardening frenzy in December is at work now.  The Summer Solstice is the signal for me to rein in my wild planting excesses.

This year, however, I have been struggling for some time with dry conditions, devoting lots of energy to hauling water or dragging the hoses around.  The statistics just in reveal that this is the second driest April through June on record.  Also, we rarely get our first hundred degree days until late July, and we've had so many now I've lost count.  How it could be so hot and dry and still be humid is one of Nature's nasty secrets.

It's like when you feel kind of crummy and the doctor says you have pneumonia, you feel immediately much worse.

After that, I understood that the reason the Remote Garden has not grown properly is drought. I gave the plants water, fish fertilizer, water, cow manure tea and water.  I can't carry enough water up there to make a difference.  These tomatoes simply do not have enough leaf cover to protect the tomatoes from sun scald.  When corn tassels at two feet tall, it's the same thing; it's not going to make it. The word is unthrifty.

Many trees, like these honey locusts, have been forced to lay off half of their leaves.  My first ripe cucumber looked delicious but when I tasted it, it was so bitter that hours later my lips and tongue were still smarting.
My daughter Lissa raised some like that one year and she said even the chickens wouldn't eat them, and they have no lips.

The only sensible thing for me to do is to stop watering the lost causes and concentrate on things that have a chance of survival.  This is the first time I've ever seen a peony bush wilt.  They did perk up with some water. Veggies and perennials first is my plan.  Some of the annual flowers have already shriveled up in the hot wind.

Even the Grand River doesn't look so grand, and is dropping daily.  I was sitting here at Fishing Beach one evening, listening to some fish tumbling rocks nearby when a young deer appeared on the sandbar.  I held very still and it couldn't seem to figure me out for some time.  It finally trotted along the sand upriver.  My side of the river has no sandbars, just rock. It's on the outer bend of the river, so I must hang out with the rip-rap. The river can now be waded across, so I may see how far I can walk on the sandy side.  At least I can go around the bend, if I haven't already.

Meanwhile, I got an order of wool sock yarns and am knitting away while listening to a biography of Birdseye, inventor of frozen foods.  Also for entertainment, I'm watching Shackleton and reading Black Ice, set in Antarctica.  It all helps.