78°f /25.5°C and humid at 7:30am, 92°f/33°C now with heat index of 101° and expected to get hotter this afternoon. No chance of rain.
We were out early again this morning, getting done what we can before it gets unbearable. I have finished my stringtrimming work for now, thank goodness, but haven't been in the vegetable garden in the last 2 days, so that will be tomorrow morning's work. So far everything looks okay, although I did have some watering to do for the pots and planters. I added a little liquid fish and seaweed fertilizer to the water to give them a little boost.
The rest of the morning, once I showered and rested a bit, was inside work. I did some organizing in our work/storage room, hung out some laundry, and started a pot of broccoli- cheese soup, which is simmering as I write. I used broccoli stems and leaves from the broccoli I harvested (and we ate) the other day, plus a couple packs of broccoli frozen last year that need to be used. This afternoon I plan to make black raspberry jam, and put the last coat of wax on the desk I have been working on. And maybe do a few easy listings.
A little note here on the plastic bag dryer I use. I don't know if any of you reuse plastic bags, but this card displayed works great for me.
I am adjusting to this new staying-inside routine, but i do get restless. I want to be outside! But if course that's impossible in this heat. I did finish another book, an older title by Judith Guest called Errands. It follows the lives of a family before and after the father's death from cancer. I must say, it was a bit of a downer, yet at the same time hopeful. I don't know if the author has ever experienced what she was writing, but she certainly has a deep understanding of grief, and of how and person progresses through a cancer diagnosis. She was spot on, at least in my own observations of friends with cancer, and my own journey through deep grief. Now i am starting a book by one of my favorite authors, Alice Hoffman, titled Here on Earth. I hope it is as good as others I have read by her
A couple of you suggested hiring a lawn service to mow for us. Larry mows between an acre and 2 acres, it's just the way our place is laid out, and it's not easy. I have no clue what lawn services cost, but I am sure it would be quite costly. I am thinking about it though, and about how we will manage as we get older. To pay for such a service would probably strap us very tightly financially, if we could afford it at all. I really don't want to tie down my one son who lives closest to us either. But I do not want to move either. So trying to think this through
How are you managing the heat where you are? Iris, I know you are not warm at all! Right now I am kinda jealous of those of you with more moderate weather. It used to be that we might get a few days of extreme heat in mid-July, but never in June.
I remember when I was a child in northern Virginia, the local radio station would have a contest to guess the day and I think the time when the temperature reached 100°. It happened almost every year, usually in July. Manassas had very humid, sticky summers, as I recall, even worse than here, and similar to that of Washington, DC, which was only 25 miles away. We had no air- conditioning back then, almost nobody did. Mom would close up the living room and pull the curtains so that at least that room would stay somewhat cool.
The rest of the house though, would really heat up. We children played outside under a big shady maple, or in the sheltered and shade side yard. Sometimes we were allowed to turn on the hose and run through the cold, cold water, or fill a galvanized metal tub to play in. What bliss. We would make Kool-Aid popsicles in ice trays, using sticks saved year to year. Dinner was often just sandwiches or something very simple, because who wanted to cook in that heat?
When I moved here, we had no electricity for about 15 years, so no fans or AC to cool off. We didn't have these big shade trees either, so the house would really heat up. Fortunately these hills cool down nicely at night usually, so sleep wasn't difficult, and mornings were not too bad. Even when we got electricity, we didn't get an air conditioner until 2003, when my parents were coming for a (very) rare visit.
Today we have 3 window units--a big one in the kitchen that cools the main part of the house, a small one in the log room, and another small one back in the work/storage room. Often these are all turned off at night, and we will open the bedroom window. Maybe it was all thosevyears of our lives without AC, but we both enjoy the night air, and the quiet music of summer nights.
