When it's this hot and sticky, I'm glad that the plants can carry on in the daytime without me. I prefer to never work in the direct sunshine. After seven in the evening, the trees on the west give lovely shade so I can weed, deadhead and do a little light gardening.
Shade and breeze are wonderful things, just meant for a lawn chair and a good book and/or knitting. Even though it is humid, it's a great improvement over the dusty last few weeks. Trucks with cattle carriers were speeding by, creating as much dust as if they had driven an entire herd down the road.
Whoop-ee-ti-yi-o get along little doggies.
The strong wind, always from the direction of the gravel road, rose up over my house and rained down in sheets on the back side. Not a good time for me to be resting on the chaise on the back deck. It's so hard to sip iced coffee while wearing a dust mask.
My late afternoons were spent watering from the rainwater collection in the cistern.
At last, the longed-for rains came the last two nights. They did bring heat advisories, but one can't complain.
Reading outdoors reminds me of when I was a teen. We had no air conditioning, so the coolest place on a hot summer afternoon was lying on a blanket in the grass under a shady tree. I read Zane Grey, Agatha Christie, Daphne Du Maurier, Jane Austen and countless others. I saved Dickens for Christmas.
I know, reading books is So Last Century. Come to think of it, it was last century.
