Heat and hollyhocks
We are still ‘enjoying’ tropical temperatures over here in Switzerland, but I’m not sure that my home or I are really made for this. My daughters were even sent home from school today because the buildings were too hot. Extraordinary. Today they came home with their end of term reports. One of the two – and I won’t name names – brought the two lowest grades we have EVER seen on a report card. I think there was some serious lack of work going on there. One of the grades – thankfully the lower – was for latin though, which she is dropping. As I hated latin with a vehemence myself (which she knows really well) it was hard to get very upset about it. Oh well, at least she knows that there is work to do next year. Will that make a difference? Who knows? At some point teenagers have to ‘get it’ about the benefits of working hard, right?.
Luckily for me I had planned a rest week and won’t be running again until (early in the morning on) Friday.My left achilles tendon has been niggling away for weeks and with my big race only two and a half weeks away I rather reluctantly had to decide last week to rest up and see if it would heal a little. It seems to be doing the trick and part of me is glad I’m not running – my body doesn’t function well in the mid 30s (whats that? 90s Fahrenheit I guess – super hot anyway!). So I’m laying low until Friday, doing some yoga, stretching and pilates, but that’s about it. Oh and getting nervous….I’m doing quite a bit of that too…
Knitting and quilting have come to a halt too – it’s just way, way too hot for either of them. I did finally make it to the quilt shop to buy batting for all the quilt tops that I have lined up and waiting to be quilted. So a tiny step in the right direction. I don’t know how you ladies out there in the deep south manage to achieve anything at all. With these sorts of temperatures and more all summer I would very quickly be a little puddle on the floor somewhere!
I had lots of comments about my hollyhock photo yesterday – so I’m treating you to a couple more. These are mostly in my neighbour’s garden – only the ones at the front of the two pictures are mine. Hollyhocks really are the easiest thing to have in the garden – they self-seed, mutate colours and seem to be indestructible. They don’t mind ice and snow in the winter and they don’t get eaten or bothered by anything nasty. And they make your garden look like an English cottage garden….which is probably the most important as far as I’m concerned!
Summer greetings to you all
Helen
July 14th, 2010 at 4:49 pm
Hope your ankle heals up in time for the race!
Wish we had some of your warm weather here. We are on the coast and in the summer the fog is right on the coast all the time. We are lucky if it burns off in the early afternoon, and it rarely gets over 70.
That’s a shame about the poor marks. My first term in high school was a real period of adjustment for me. I really struggled, but managed to get into the groove of studying properly and got my grades up pretty quickly. It really was a matter of developing the right study habits for me.
July 15th, 2010 at 2:51 am
I’d forgotten about Switzerland’s lack of air conditioning in many buildings. There is an author here in Washington who is promoting cutting way back on the use of air conditioning [Stan Cox]. He’s probably right but I would have to move WAY north. That, or drive around all day in my air-conditioned car.