We send you your weather, and it is getting worse not better. LOL

Every time I ask my husband for help, he tells me what the temperature is. (He is at the movie now.)

Sammy

I have an excuse, toothache. Too hot to be out but I was out some. Smokey Joe has the right idea.

Carla

...sit under the oak tree on the deck, drink lemonade, eat ice cream sandwiches, and garden vicariously thru the forum...

I dunno, sounds like fun to me! :)

Yesterday here it topped out at 76. Heavenly!

We hit about 91 yesterday and the humidity was ridiculous. But my husband was home for a change, and he is never home lately, and I wanted to take advantage of that. I don't like my 2-year-old running around the front yard alone while I'm paying more attention to my digging. So I got a really big glass of water and braved the elements. I would consider myself crazy if I were watching myself work.

Today, though, I swear the humidity is worse. So I guess I will stay inside.

Smokey Joe must be making you more hot. And getting hair all over you. :)

Cat hair is the universal condiment.

It rained about 1/2" yesterday; just enough to raise the humidity levels. The A/C has run non-stop. Ice cream sounds good....maybe I'll hit Culvers' later...mmm. chocolate, anyone?

Same here and only in the 80's. Don't envy anyone having to be doing heavy planting and installing, try to get that done B4 the heat sets in. I'd at least try to wait until evening, early morning last couple of days, too wet.

I've already been out, and the sun is really beating down. Local paper says it's 86. Sometimes I can tolerate that, but the humidity is terrible which makes it worse so I'm in my ac my son had put in for me last year, waited until it got really bad to turn it on, but it's so nice after all those years of suffering in the heat even though I had strategies for coping inside and 3 commercial fans going at times. It gets to the point it just blows the hot air around, but I don't know how I'd survive w/o those fans. I'd be out playing golf, walking 18, in this stuff when I was younger, no more. Had a heatstroke as a kid so always had to be more careful. I see why it is so dangerous for old people in apt buildings in the cities. At least I have screens and trees shading some of the house.

I always feel sorry for people who have to work out in it and take that into consideration if anyone is helping me, try to schedule what I can that when it isn't July and August.

The toothache, oh dear. Not fun, and I have had a my share of bad ones, nothing helps much for those but getting to the dentist or oral surgeon.

Carla my husband says a toothache, no matter how minor, is an excuse to drink whiskey:) Go for it miss! (Or whatever your cocktail of choice is). Myself I find that on a really hot day a nice ice cold gin and tonic really hits the spot.

Hope you feel better.

Kate

Now Kate and her husband are on the right track.
I'm thinking of popping open a nice Micro Brew right now.
It's 77 here and I'm hard at work bidding on a camera lens on ebay.
Garden chores after dinner.

I was so bored I went to the video store and rented "Cloverfield". Completely forgot I suffer from vertigo really bad and that's why I didn't see it at the movies. So I watched about 1/2 of it and now I am nauseated. But hubby is watching it and I'm still bored...and sick.

About 7:00 I sallied forth, got one rose planted and one of the arbors in. The three arbors are for Cl. Ceceli Brunner. I thought I'd have another year before I had to deal with her, but in June she suddenly sprouted three 8 ft canes. She was just a little 1 gal last year. So I moved the arbor she was on--naturally I couldn't find a match--and bought three cheap white vinyl ones at BestNest.com. I was going to build one but when I added time and materials, it was just as cheap to buy them, plus I don't have to paint the vinyl. So now she will make a covered walkway. I'll take some photos and try to figure out how to post them.

Ann, I love your adage, "Cat hair is the universal condiment." It certainly is around here. The cats are now sprawled in front of the vents. I broke down and turned the AC on when it hit 88 indoors. I bring all the cats in at night, a habit left from nastier neighborhoods, plus, for 10 hours, I know where everybody is.

My grandmother won't eat my food because I let my cats run my house.

Catsrose:

We have the same ritual of bringing in our three cats at night. Ours comes though from living in the mountains where they can, do and have encountered skunks and racoons. And the occasional bear. Plus my cat Bligh used to be such a wanderer that he would often not grace me with his presence until 4 a.m. I much prefer locking the cat door at 10 p.m. thank you. Ahh the weighty burden of being a cat parent:)

Kate

Yes, yuck, the heat! I consider us very fortunate in not having had too much of the blazing heat during July. August is still ahead, but we have gotten a tremendously high amount of rainfall....seven and a half inches for July so far,(!!!) and it has been raining all night and is supposed to rain for much of the day today.

If I get up nice and early to work before it gets too hot, I can easily keep working while the temps go up. But to leave the shelter of the house and go out in the heat? Not a chance. Fortunately I don't have a LOT of heavy work to do before Fall.

We turn our air on when it gets 84 in the house...but we have very high hunidity here, especially this year, and are paranoid after battling major mold and mildew problems at our old place.

The cats stay in all the time, since we live in town and on a pretty busy road. Much to their chagrin. It was harder for our Littlecat to adjust to town life than it was for us.

{{gwi:307146}}

Love all the sweet kitties (little blue eyed beauty Greenhaven)....How hot is it? I was going to deadhead last night when the evening got cooler, but since it was still 95 at 7:30 last night I just came in and plopped down under the A/C.

Ugh, you now it has ben a bad day when it is still 95 at 7:30 pm! Or WILL be bad when it is 80 degrees at 7 in the morning.

Thanks for the compliment on my kitty, mary! He isn't so little, which is the irony. But when we got him he WAS the little one compared to our 18 pounder. This one isn't quite so large now as the other was. Littlecat's housemate is very, very small, with the teeniest wittle feet.

Catsrose, is your SmokyJoe, well, smoky? Or is he a big ol' black-and-white like our now-deceased big boy?

Ugh, we're on our 5th straight 90+ day with stifling humidity. I've been gardening in phases, doing 15 minutes, then heading inside for a while. Dig a hole, then run inside. You know it's bad when beads of sweat are dripping off the end of your nose. Ack

Eric

Mary said it all about Oklahoma. What is frustrating to me is that once I am set to work in the garden, I have trouble switching to housework. I always have trouble switching to housework, though.

Sammy

I too am a "Heat Hostage"-----We used to have a pool which was neat because you could work for a while then jump in the cool water. I wish we still had the pool.

When it is hot and humid I hibernate inside.
Of course my yard looks really bad but so be it----
Florence

Hah! I laugh in the face of your heat and humidity! It is humid and about 90 plus degrees here from May through October. Every time I mow the lawn I think I will die of heat stroke. You can't garden at dusk because the mosquitos come out. We do get to garden when the snow is falling up north though.

I lived in Central Florida and the summer heat isn't any worse then in Oklahoma. But It is longer. Florida had only about 2 months out of the year where I wasn't sweltering or being carried off by the extra large mosquitoes. Apologies to those in Florida, but you couldn't pay me to ever live there again.

Heat and more heat, with 60% chance of thunderstorms tomorrow at another 95 degrees. Read 'sauna.' I tell my clients, I ony work until noon in this weather. Then I come home and, like Eric, run--no, drag--myself in and out trying to garden. I planted one plant this afternoon and it was so hot that the cats and plopped down in the shade and pulled clover out of the grass!

Yes, SmokeyJoe is a fine rich Russian Blue grey. His sister, Ophelia, is equally as big but she's all black. My littlest is Mia-Nina, 5 lbs, about the size of a 7 mo kitten. She's a buff color and Buff Beauty is her rose. Ophelia's is Ophelia and Smokey's is Lagerfeld, sort of a silvery purple--as close to grey as I can get.

I love Littlecat's pink nose. Of all mine, only Alistair has A Very Pink Nose like that (his rose is Alister Stella Grey).

HEAT, you good people don't know what it is. Here in the southern desert of Nevada it was 102 degrees today and it's predicted to get around 105 later this week. Having lived here for 13 years I'm used to it, however, it's our monsoon season so the humidity is way up there which makes being outside horrible. I have too much to do outside getting ready for the fall veggie garden to stay inside, but I take "Many Breaks" with an adult beverage while I'm working. I guess there's no place that's perfect year-round so we just have to deal with what we have in the best way we know how.

Greg
Nevada

Maryl, a-MEN! I lived in (and graduated from) Kissimmee for five years. The winters area dream...but the summers? Disgusting. I don't miss it except for the family I have down there still.

I agree that here we can have days at a time where you wouldn't know the difference between FL and no IL. But at least we have an end in sight.

catsrose, I forgot to say your babies all sound so beautiful! Have you ever tried a grey rose like Ash Wednesday?

I love teeny kitties like your Mia-Nina. Our MissCat (I know, I know....real original....)is about the size of a seven-month kitten, but she is a chubby thing and probably weighs more like eight pounds. A whole lot of character in a very compact package, lol! She's a tortie, though, and hard to photograph.

Here she is with my son...she is a world-class cuddler, very un-cat-like in her neediness and dependency.

{{gwi:307147}}

The tooth ache was CAUSED by the dentist. Anyway, it will get better, just going to take lots of time.
Kate, I like your husband's logic but afraid drinking in this heat is likely to cause more illness, lol.
Greg, it's the humidity that gets people. I can handle heat but not humidity. Of course in the drought there's not much humidity. I don't see how your roses survive that desert.
Maryl, FL is one of the last places I'd want to live.

Carla

As bad as it is here, I can't forget about our brave men and women serving our country overseas. The temperature yesterday in Kabul was a breezy 90, in Baghdad 115, in Kuwait City 120. Imagine wearing all that equipment in those temperatures. And they aren't over there dodging mosquitoes. They are dodging bullets. God bless them all.

Green, here's Tabby taking it easy in her kitty condo ..ok, she commandered my fly-thru bird feeder. At least there's no birdseed it in during the summer months, so she just sleeps in it during the hot days.

{{gwi:307148}}

I'm in total agreement with you maryl, sometimes we just don't realize how good we really have it. Thanks to our brave men and women who are fighting to allow us all to have it so good.

Greg
Nevada

maryl, agreed...

terryjean, how precious! Your cat has the sweetest face...but if you photo-shopped a couple of feathers sticking out of her mouth? THAT would be hilarious!

The weather here in northwest Missouri has just been perfect this year. Nice and warm but not terribly hot and not too humid either. Ma Nature has provided us with perfect amounts of rain at just the right times so that I haven't had to water my roses from the drip irrigation except one time when I wanted to use my fertilizer injector to do some fertilizing with liquid Response and SuperThrive in it. I just watered long enough to get the fertilizer to them and went on to the next bed and the next day it rained long and steady and washed the fertilizer down deep for my roses to enjoy it immensely. Other than that one time I haven't watered at all.
I just hope it stays this way all year long and that we have a nice snowy winter like last year that provided a great insulating blanket for the roses all winter long. I didn't lose but one rose last winter with no protection provided by me at all except one that was a wimpy bush and destined to perish anyway. Ma Nature has been super kind to me for the last year so I cannot complain about her at all.
John

Yesterday and today we have had a heat index of 106. We just returned home, and outside the temperature, not heat index is 96. It is 8:32 at night. August will be terrible.

I have often wondered why people lived in this state or many others before air conditioning.

Sammy

Sammy,
I'm still try to figure out why the Pilgrims stayed in MA after the first year--miserable winters and miserable summers.

Something NOT to do at this time of year: look at European temperatures and rainfall (and some of the cams with scenic views).
But then a visit to southeast Asia for summer temperatures and to the Indian subcontinent for a real temperature check.
The Spanish siesta evolved for a reason.
Morning feeding the livestock wasn't done at mid-day. In part because the livestock would be asleep under trees then.

Roses and summer dormancy....something to think about.

Oh please you guys are wimps...except for the Florida fellow-sufferers!! We get up in the morning to about 80 degrees with 98% humidity, and it's downhill from there. I've spent most of the summer gardening, but not after noon, unless I've been off my meds...just kidding. Digging a planting hole in our dry clay is much like chipping away at adobe brick with a shovel. There are two holes out there now that I filled with water so that I can attack them later and make them large enough to plant something. We were sure hoping that Dolly would bring us more rain than the trace we got, but alas.