Hot Summer Nights - or - Hell and High Water!
OK, so for those of you who are lucky to live where there is a sea breeze or river breeze or lake breeze, you have no idea how lucky you are. For nearly the entire month of July we have been in broil mode in the mid-west. I would give my right eye for a sea breeze right now.
We thought it would never stop raining in June (record amounts that month with record flooding as well) and so when the sun came out in July we were all happy that summer had arrived. However, 3 weeks of temperatures between 90-116 (yes, 116 with the heat index!) is leading us to believe we just might be in the middle of the rapture and we get the Hell part!
Serious heat and humidity, to biblical proportions, has been upon us with nearly no rain. The only things loving it are our tomatoes, basil, mosquitoes and other bugs in the garden, and our cat Lulu who is a heat-seeking missile. The farmers we buy our eggs from said their chickens have stopped laying eggs because it has been so hot. The corn and soy bean crops are starting to be affected also. Luckily our reservoirs are full because of all of the rain in June so we will hopefully make it through the summer without any water shortages. But hey, it's not global warming, right? Yeah, sure.
We were able to start getting some paint on the house in early July before the temperatures and humidity got out of control. Once the early morning temps were starting out over 80 with 90% humidity, we decided to hang up the painting until September. Ugh! Sitting on the porch, fan going, with a mojito or gin and tonic sounds like how we will want to spend the rest of summer :o)
Here are some photos to show you what we've been up to:
Early July when it was still cool enough to sit outside to eat. Here I am with our friend Paula from California, Sally and Alex from next door.
Another dinner party with our friends the Finches (not the birds but our friends Jeff and Candace), and that's our architect Kris (on the left) and his partner Bob. We can already tell we are going to get hours and hours of fun out of our new front porch.
Some of the yummy food we create for our porch dinners. Here we have crab cakes, grilled shrimp, couscous, steamed spinach and fennel salad.
Here are a few photos of what the house is starting to look like with some paint on it. We chose this nice subtle yellow. Sort of like us........subtle. Yeah, right!!! :o)
Jenni finishing up some of the prep on the front of the house.
As the new porch is coming to completion, we can see that we will spend lots of time out here. It's warm, cozy and yet spacious.
Our cats are in heaven on the new porch. Lulu absolutely loves to lay under the ficus tree on the wall ledge. She often will lay there all day acting like the little Cleopatra that she is..
Fergus (a.k.a. Meatloaf) also enjoys basking in the shade on the ledge. I think we will make a rug out of him when he dies. :o)
Our vegetable garden is out of control. We have never had so many tomatoes, this large, in the 10 years we have lived here. There are many jars of pasta sauce in our future.
We have set up our two rain barrels that are helping us with the watering of the garden. We get an extra 110 gallons of free water storage from rain with these two beauties. You can see the special downspout we had made that can switch the gutter drainage from the barrels to the french drain system that goes underground to the back yard. We highly recommend doing this in your yard if you have the rain to support it. We water all or our potted plants and herbs and vegetables during the summer months with this system.
We are thankful every day for what we have, and especially during late summer when the sweet corn comes to market. We buy 12 to 24 ears every weekend from the farmers market starting about mid July. We bring it home, eat some off of the cob and cut the rest fresh off of the cob and send it right to the freezer. It provides us with the sweet taste of summer all winter. We usually put up about 20 pounds of corn for the winter.
There is still a bit more adventure from July to share. Stay tuned for my next post and news from our trip to The Windy City: Chicago. A whirlwind of science, technology and weather to share with you. Hold on to your hats!
