Roots on the Roof: Feelin' hot hot hot...

The last couple weeks have been hot. Not your regular late June, early July introduction to sunshine and summer, but a sweltering heat wave that's turned our un-air-conditioned loft into a soupy Bikram studio for unhappy cats. Really brutal record-breaking heat, the blazing sun in a cloudless sky, air still and thick and everything sticky and clinging. And our roof, with it's full exposure and slightly reflective surface, has been doing a pretty good impression of a frying pan. We've had to double the amount of water we give the plants, finding them wilted and fried at the end of the day. But everything is hanging in there, for now, we all just look a little worse for wear.

One side effect of the heat: our arugula plants, which had been producing a steady stream of spicy little leaves which we would pick and add to salads, started bolting in a hurry. Apparently higher temperatures will cause the arugula to send hard stems and flowers skyward, after which the leaves become much more bitter and less tender. (We all put it out there in the summer, don't we?)

So we went ahead and harvested what was left, pulled up our fried and embittered stems, and sowed a new batch of lettuce seeds.

Hopefully we'll see some fresh little green leaves sprouting soon, and maybe it'll cool down just a little. There have been some breaks in the heat, but it looks like we are in for a long, hot summer.