Wild Pitches and Four O'Clocks

On one of my many sleepless nights, I saw a Twilight Zone episode where this poor girl was suffering mightily. The sun was moving closer to Earth and she was dying of heat. (I can relate!) The irony, of course, (TZ is all about irony) was that she was dreaming. When she woke up she was freezing to death because the sun was moving away from the planet.

Wild Four O'Clocks laugh off
110 degree (F) summers and
-30 below zero (F) winters

We went to a Bees game last night to 'beat the heat.' How sitting outdoors in 90 degree temperatures beats air-conditioned comfort at home is beyond me. But, I'm a pretzel, I can bend, so I went and hoped it would be a lively game. What I meant by that was hits, runs and errors by the players, not by me.

The first near-miss was a foul ball that careened into the stands. Mike was thrilled I had a souvenir to take home. Next up, a bat came soaring through the air, landing at my feet. I don't know what bothered me more - the bat, the crazies who mobbed me to grab the bat, or Mike missing the entire point that it practically killed me. ("That was yours. Why didn't you grab it? It was lying right next to you!")

My customized Google home page keeps my finger on the pulse of current events. Today's top stories:
1) 1,000 new wildfires in the West.
2) 1 million Easy Bake Ovens recalled.

Unless you live in the West, you're probably not seeing the correlation. We've been living in an Easy Bake Oven since mid-June. The heat is making us all a little testy.

Certain flowers, however, actually prefer the environment of an Easy Bake Oven. I don't believe it's possible for the weather to get too hot, too cold, or too dry to bother Wild Four O'Clocks. Plant this crazy wildflower in a very abusive location.

Mirabilis multiflora (Wild Four O'Clock) USDA zones 4-8 thrives at elevations above 7,000 feet. Grows best with lots of hot sun and little to no watering.