If you're a life-form like vegetation you'd be in bliss after yesterday's all day, heavy rain and today's follow-up with blazing sun in an overheated atmosphere of 30C. I cannot begin to imagine what it's like in Britain, hitting over 40C for the first time in its weather history. And that Spain, Portugal, Italy and France are even hotter boggles the mind. We're melting at 30C. And the wind, while providing relief in the shade, feels like an unwanted hot breath, directly in the sun.

Little wonder there are wildfires burning in Europe. People scoff, say it's summer, it happens every summer and likely it does; Italy and Spain and Portugal are known to have hot, dry summers. But the heat they're currently experiencing surpasses in degree what may be considered 'normal'. 

 

As for us, it's important for us to get outside and enjoy our summer landscape. For exercise and for peace of mind. Just as it's vital for our two little dogs, for much the same reason.

 

So we're fortunate we have such easy access to a shaded forest setting for our daily walks through forest trails. We'd have gone out as usual on such a hot day early in the morning, but we chose to get out early to do our food shopping in avoidance of crowds and the growing potential of picking up the Omicron BA-5 variant that is running rampant through the area now.

After breakfast, Irving had other things on his mind. He wanted to unload his auction prize from the truck and get it into the house. I was dreading that. When he went to the auction house to pick it up yesterday, a young brawny man brought it out for him and placed it on the truck bed which Irving had prepared to receive it. The curved lip of the vase had been carefully protected with bubble wrap and tape, and Irving made certain it wouldn't roll by wedging it securely in place.

 

It's a Japanese court vase. And it's porcelain, and it's large, a dead-weight. On its stand it's just a few inches shorter than I am, and it likely weighs at least what I do. He brought up a dolly he had made years ago, placed it beside the door leading to the garage, backed the truck into the garage, and carefully edged the vase forward by tugging the cardboard he had lain down under it, at either end. Then he had to grasp the vase upright, carry it up four steps into the house and deposit it on the dolly. Where will it stand? Who knows; Irving will shoehorn it in somewhere. He's an inveterate and incurable collector of art and antiques. I might be considered one of his collection.

 

But we did get out into the maw of the heat maelstrom. This time taking a water bottle with for the puppies though we had our doubts they'd drink from it; they rarely do. Unsurprisingly, we came across a total of one other person and a dog in our hour-and-a-half ramble. A leisurely hike that began with Irving picking ripe thimbleberries. Jackie was under the weather, so only Jillie ate them. Jackie was looking for grass for his upset stomach.

 

The sunflowers that we passed early yesterday morning before the rain came down are further evolved in their blooming cycle. And more Himalayan orchids are beginning to bloom, vying for room and attention in a crowded sunlight glade in the forest packed tight with other wildflowers. For a change, I wore shorts and a sleeveless top for relief from the heat. And I was relieved that there are very few mosquitoes about now. 

 

My hair, that I had always snipped to death at least for the past twenty years, is finally growing in. Back in March I got fed up with my boyish haircut and decided no more whimsical scissor-cutting. So its had six months to grow in and grow it has.  I like it better long, but it can be annoying in such hot water. I pin it back to try to establish some order, to little avail. It's always been stubborn, with a life of its own.

 

By the time we returned from our hike my hair looked like a rival to Albert Einstein's. The heat, the humidity and the wind all had a say and their influence on my mop of self-curling, brillo hair was anything but attractive; I looked like a wild woman of Borneo. Irving doesn't 'notice'. He thinks I look fine all the time. Besides which his mind is dwelling on his prize, the Arita court vase waiting for an answer to that question up above: where to put it?