Yes Jamus, It was a massive shock to come home from 2 weeks in Thailand to find huge damage from those awfully hot days that followed one after the other for almost 2 weeks. And, of course, there had already been two other bouts of heatwaves which had already knocked many things around badly. With a bit of clipping and snipping damaged and scorched plants have come back after that glorious rain but there was other, more serious damage we hadn't counted on. Three well established exotic trees dropped huge branches unexpectedly - a silver-leaved weeping pear dropped almost half of its structure, Cercis FOREST PANSY dropped about one third of its canopy, and Azara microphylla simply fell apart leaving one trunk where there had been three. The loss of shade has had a serious impact on the drought tolerant hardy plants that are underneath.
This was shocking enough but not the end of the story. My big greenhouse, the one with haworthias, dwf aloes, Adeniums, Rhipsalis, Tillandsias, bromeliads, euphorbias etc was a disaster zone. The whole top-shelf of plants were bleached white and have died and/ or rotted as a result of being cooked! This despite a double layer of cream shade cloth over the roof. It was lack of sufficient circulation of fresh air that caused the catastrophe I think. At least the Lithops seem to have come through unscathed.
So it wasn't just the shade that caused the problem, or the extreme heat, but circulation of fresh air played a role too.
I am still learning.
t