August 2026 - Kathi Keville

So the dog days are based on the fact that the dog star, named Sirius, now that's not spelled like you're not serious, are you? It's spelled like the dog star, different spelling.

And what happens is the star is up there all the time.

but it's too close to the sun.

And right about now, maybe a week ago, it merged out far enough.

Well, I was just thinking Alan Stoller probably would not like me to say merged out because that's not really what's happening.

But from our view, and you can begin to see it, the ancient Greeks and Romans said that the sun was at its very, very hottest right now of the entire year.

But, of course, we don't need those ancient people to tell us that.

We know that.

And the fact that the star was coming up right after the sun...

And, by the way, if you want to find this star, in the constellation, what you do is you look for Orion, which is maybe the easiest thing to find up in the sky, and then you follow Orion's belt, the three bright stars, you follow it down toward the horizon...

And as you go there, then you'll find this dog star.

It's in a constellation called Canis Major.

That means basically big dog.

And it was thought to actually talk to the sun or increase the sun's ability to put heat on the Earth, partially responsible for it.

So there's a lot of mythology around that.

this particular star and then these dog days.

And why would this be important to a gardener or a farmer? Because we are a gardening show.

Because we care about how hot it is and the intensity of the sun.

And tell you what, I've been going out and checking on all my plants and I actually doubled the water on some of them.

I've got probably 16 different stations, water stations, because they have a huge garden with all these, you know, plants from around the world and they have different demands on what they need.

And then I've got some on overhead so they think that they're getting rained on and they're still back east in New Jersey or something and drip and just every imaginable kind of water system.

But I'm walking around, I'm noticing that some are looking a little bit droopy.

So I increased the water on those guys, and I'm watching them.

And things happen this time of year.

Back in the days of the Roman and the Greeks, especially the Romans, they decided that because the gardens were in this time of year and the farm was all planted, that everybody should take a week off.