COOL, PRECIOUS COOL

The first thing I do every morning is get up and lock the cool in.  It’s the most important job of the day.

I can’t remember when this hot streak started (I think my brain is a little baked) but the ‘normal hot’ days have been few and far between.  Mostly it’s been day after day of unrelenting abnormally high temperatures and smoke haze from forest fires over a thousand miles away.  Locally we won in Mother Nature’s where-should-I-scatter-my-thunderstorms-this-year lottery.  Whereas almost all of the prairies are parched, crispy fried, and crawling with grasshoppers, small pockets here and there are green again because they got rain.  We live in one of them.

Also, there are fields that are black again.  That’s what happens when the moisture from above doesn’t fall in liquid form.  A hail storm can bash a crop right back into the ground.  Whether this is a good or a bad thing depends on how much hail insurance was purchased for that field.  If you are a farmer there is no need to travel to Vegas to gamble big money.

As this heat wave goes on and on I’ve been trying to come up with some coping skills to get through the torture.  Some things not to try would be building a deck on the south side of the house, or ignoring the weeds in hopes that they will go away on their own.  I try the weed experiment every year with the exact same results every single time.  I think I may be a slow learner.

2021 is not going to be a stellar year for garden harvest.  The peas are done before the end of July and the beans are only half trying.  The carrot and beet crop look plentiful, the corn loves its heat units so the few seeds that germinated are doing great and the potatoes got over watered and then rained on – half the plants are dead.  Who saw that coming in the middle of a drought?

On the other hand, the two watermelon plants I bought on impulse and plunked in the ground think they are in Mexico and are growing like mad.  It’s really hard to tell what’s going on in my tomato jungle but I think there will be quite the harvest there too.  My pumpkins are coming back from the hail shredding their leaves – if Halloween comes at Christmastime we’ll be fine.

That’s life on the outside.  Whenever possible this summer, I’ve been hanging out inside.

This may explain how the weeds got so big on me.

The second thing I do every morning is check the weather forecast.  Well, no, that’s a lie.  First I need coffee, and then I check the weather.  Not just what’s going to happen that day, but how many more days of hideous heat are still to come?  Just so you know, the long term goes as far as mid August with no end in sight.  And as important (and depressing) as those daytime temps are, the night time temps are even more crucial.

You see our house doesn’t have air conditioning, all we have is a very large ceramic tile floor which is a very inexpensive way to cool a house as long as the nights are cool.

 The last thing I do every day is open all the windows and let the cool in.  Ceramics are a fantastic conductor of heat and cold so the cooler the night the cooler the house is the next day. 

While I sip my precious coffee I check out the outdoor temperature.  Anything lower than 15 gets a little happy dance.

 

 

SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR JULY 2021

I remember the good old days ... past summers when other places in the world made the news because they were stuck in a heat wave they couldn’t shake.  While I listened to the news reports about checking on elderly neighbours and drinking lots of water I would always be thankful that I wasn’t where ever the heat was.  I don’t do heat well at all.

If you want proof come and visit me  – I will be the sunburnt puddle of sweaty goo waiting for the sun to go down.  I’m pretty sure Turbo, our Husky/German Shepherd cross is dealing with this heat better than I am – and he’s wearing a full fur coat.

Due to my brain melting I am not quite sure when this blast furnace began but I think we’ve been at it for two weeks.  And during those two weeks we did renovations to our deck ... on the south side of our house ... in a yard that protects us from prevailing winds – even when you’re dying for a breeze.  You know that you are down to appreciating the basic necessities of life when moving air from the south or the east feels heaven sent.  Come to think of it, maybe it was.

As the heat doesn’t seem to want to leave I am compiling a list of things to keep us alive until it snows.

First of all: WATER.  We buy our drinking water and I usually have a 3 bottle rotation going on.  During the deck building period we were up to 5 five gallon bottles on the go over the same amount of time.  True, we had company helping us with the deck project and the drinking, but still.  I couldn’t believe how much water we went through.

 And ice cream. 

And freezie pops.

 And iced tea.

 And Gatorade. 

And propane.  Like heck I was cooking anything inside!

I heartily recommend having A/C in your house.  We don’t, but I highly recommend it.

Sadly we were unable to cool down grandchildren with a sprinkler or pool, which led to the happy discovery of Toonie Tuesdays at the Redvers pool.  It’s amazing how out of touch a grandma can be.

 Water is on everyone’s minds these days as we all wonder when the well might go dry.  We are not down to rationing showers yet (thank goodness because people get to smelling a bit off when it’s this hot) but with no rain in the forecast these things are beginning to worry me.

I admit my worries about dishwashers and laundry and showers pale in comparison to herds of cattle with bare pastures, no hay to cut for winter and no water to drink.  I sure feel for those in the cattle business, this is serious stuff.

I wish I could say I had a strategy to overcome heat and drought but humans have been trying to entice or appease the rain gods since time began without much luck.  I’m not opposed to a nationwide rain dance ... and I’m sure I read somewhere that they are more effective if done in the nude ... but how about we play it safe and apply Covid rules?  Dance nude all you want ... in the privacy of your own home.  Possibly wear a mask – the dignity you save may be your own!

But, good luck on drumming up rain.  You’ll be everyone’s hero if you manage that!