Looking out my Backdoor: Burning, burning, burning, a ring of fire!

My hen-and-chicks, a succulent in my rock garden, is burned to a crisp. The leaves look like ashes.

While April, May and June are our hottest months, here in Jalisco, relieved by a welcome cool-down when the rains begin late June, the old-timers tell me this we experience now is extreme, unusual. A day or two of ultra-high heat followed by a windy reprieve; that is the usual. The old, former usual.

We have experienced weeks, multiple weeks, where the daily temperature climbs into the triple digits. If it only hits 99, believe me, it feels no different from the high, thus far, of 104, 103 havin...