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If you are like me, you tend to melt in the 100 degree temperatures we've experienced this summer.  I tend to shut down. No cooking (heat). No laundry (more heat). I just want to sit on my patio, with my cold beer, and plunk my feet in the edges of the lawn sprinkler.And even if you are the type of person that likes the heat-hikes, bikes and boats in three digit heat and humidity with glee...even you can be subject to dehydration, or a nasty sunburn.

Plants are the same way.  When it gets that hot they shut down. They don't want to grow. Their leaves and flowers are weepy, and wilted. They may be wet, but still not able to take enough water to stay hydrated. Young or freshly transplanted plants will be even more stressed than those which have acclimated and put down roots. Imagine: You move to the Mojave desert in the middle of summer and get a cup of water every day. How well do you hold up? Do you even make it? If you do, certainly the next year you are better prepared, and after 10 or 15 year, it may not even phase you. Just the same with plants; they need to be babied through their first few hot summers and cold winters.

Then, you have the plants which love the heat. They thrive in it. But even those can get burned. Just like a sunburn-we look ugly for a few days, we let the burn dry up, slough off, then we grow beautiful new skin!

We had a wisteria shut down and fall apart during our heat.  All the leaves fell off.  Literally, every single leaf.  It had water-it was just too hot.  It was a skeleton of a tree and to all outside onlookers should have been written off as dead.

But with a few cool days.  A little R&R.  Water.  Good nutrition.  Here's what the plant looks like now, just a short 3 weeks later. Amazing what the heat can do, and how resilient plants and people are meant to be.