It's Still June

It is soooo hot! We've just finished our first week of triple digit temperatures. Tomorrow it's supposed to be back down to 98 or 99. It seems as though that started much earlier last year, although I'm not motivated to look it up.

The alarm has been set between 5 AM and 6 AM every morning this week. It is already 82 degrees when I wake up. What this means in practical terms is that if I want to walk for an hour, my feet need to be on the pavement at 6:30 AM. I'm also forced to choose between walking and gardening. There is not enough time between 6:30 and 8:00 to do both. I can't get up much earlier - I don't want to walk or weed in the dark and by 8:00 it's too hot. At 8:30 I need to work. And besides, I'm really not much of a morning person, although with Mark's gentle prodding, I am improving.

Some of my plants are showing the stress of the heat. Who can blame them? If I were forced to stay out there all day I'm sure I'd be looking a bit wilted and yellow, as well.

Just walking from the car into a store puts a "glow" on my face - actually on my entire upper body. Golf is on hold. When I was young and skinny I could take the heat on the golf course. But not now. It really needs to drop back to the mid-90s before I'll go back out.

While we can still eat breakfast in the garden, dinner is becoming more of a challenge. There were two evenings this week when we had to eat inside because it was just too hot and humid to be out. There was even one night when we couldn't sit on the porch because of the heat. And it's still June.

Most of the time, Texas weather is lovely. Sunshine is reliable. (Rain, not so much.) But July and August are killers. After surviving last year we decided that we should plan to escape it this year. We made a list of everyone we knew who lived in a cooler place and decided we'd just arrange to visit each of them for a week or so and then come home when it cooled down. But we're really not likely to do that (and aren't some of you happy about that!) It's too long for Heidi and Hefner to be away at camp and we can't take them with us.

Having grown up in Ohio, it's always bothered me to "waste" a sunny day by being indoors. I love being out and about. I love al fresco dining. I love being on the golf course. I love sitting in my garden to read. And right now I would love to be back in England wearing jackets and sweaters. You can always put on more clothes if you are cold, but there is a limit to how much you can take off if you are hot.