The whole country seems like it’s in the same heatwave right now, so I hardly need to start out the Garden Report by going into the kind of temps we’ve been having for the past month or so. Since Missouri is also humid, you go out into a sauna just to get the newspaper in the morning. No doubt the plants would be loving this, except someone forgot to pay the precipitation bill, and so we’ve had no significant rain for about six weeks.

Not that you can’t water plants yourself, of course, but Missourians don’t seem to like doing that. I think somehow they think it’s cheating — like if God didn’t give you the rain, you’ve got no business sneaking around getting it for yourself.

I’m not from here originally, and I wouldn’t have been averse to trying to keep my panting garden from cooking to death, but we were off in San Diego for some weeks. So my little flower boxes full of herbs looked like brown cloth thrown over the windowsill. I’ve been giving them some water in the hopes of perking them up, but … well, it’s like trying to perk up a dead mouse by waving cheese under its nose.

So I’m having my own Martha Stewart moment and collecting all the dried herbs to use. The chives are getting cut into the little tidbits to dot over potatoes and whatnot. The basil — which likes the heat and weathered things better than the others — still has green leaves and I’ve collected a bunch into a baggie (a gardening friend told me that dried basil doesn’t keep its flavor all that well). But I’ve got the most oregano — nicely sun-dried — and it’s got the strongest smell. So I’m spending time crunching up dessicated oregano into tinier and tinier flinders and then breathing the lovely smell that’s making me want all kinds of Italian dishes.

Just a strange summer moment I thought I’d pass along.