Yes, it is hot enough and the worst is yet to come. My health wont let me do a lot so I don't even get out in the heat to try. What little I do, is done between daylight and 8 or 9 o:clock.

I need to service a couple of tractors also, but I am in no hurry.

Slowpoke,please don't push it. Those tractors can wait.

Yep, felt like a furnace out there today. I still have 98 round bales to move and dread it.

Welp, my skin is looking wonderful from massive sweating every day.

I have reduced my outside time as it gets hotter and hotter. Most mornings I only stay out an hour or two, although 2 days this week I stayed out 3-4 hours, which means I stayed out too late in the morning and got too hot, and I'm through doing that.

I'm only doing the bare minimum outdoors---watering containers, watering new plants just transplanted into the garden for fall, harvesting, weeding for a very brief time (so I'm falling behind in the war on weeds) and mowing and edging with the string trimmer.

After having rattlesnake encounters on Wed. and Thurs., we are being extra careful while outdoors. They sure are out and about a lot in this extreme heat, and that provides even more incentive to let the chores slide and stay inside in the air conditioning.

Dawn, you're having a major impact on my hugel bed re construction. Well, really, it's the snakes, but I wouldn't have known without you. My neighbor had a pile of old stockade fencing and brush on our adjoining corner/edge of the bed. It sat about 2 feet away. I decided to clean, clear and mow it for him. Found a garter snake. I'm hoping to keep the border more concise and weed-free. I know they're gonna be in it, but I wanna see as much as possible!

I think I was smarter last year. I left and drove to Colorado with the ABQ kids and grandkids. It is just to darn hot.

We are staying much to much in the house.

Moni

Bon, It pays to be smart and cautious.

One rattlesnake was near the hugelkultur bed used to fill in the old lily pond after cottonmouths migrated to it. I need more soil on this bed because it is still too much like a brushy compost pile and not quite enough like a hugelkultur pile. Hopefully this fall we'll get some more soil heaped up on top of all the decomposing wood and compost-type material. I had hoped to get that done in the spring.....but then a river of rainfall arrived and kept me from getting that done.

The second rattlesnake was in the hay bale/hugelkultur garden behind the garage. Naturally.

I won't say that I hate hugelkultur beds because I don't----I love them. These snakes, though, are examples of why I find them difficult to use, and I do hate the snakes.

Moni, You were smarter last year (grin) but, in all fairness, who knew this summer would be so horribly hot and humid? I like hot and dry much more than hot and humid.

I hate being trapped in the house by the heat all the time. It is only pleasant outside for such a brief time in the morning and again in the evening, but it certainly is safer to be indoors. This is exactly the kind of heat that makes people drop from heat exhaustion or heat stroke. Being inside can be dull and boring when you're an outdoorsy type person, but I still think it is the smart thing to do.

We're not cooling down enough at night now either. When Tim got home from work around 1 a.m. this morning, he said it still was 89 degrees outside. That's too hot for the middle of the night.

Dawn

but to be totally honest... I kind of like the heat too. No arthritis pain!

I have to agree, heat is better than cold for the old joints.

Moni, you remind me how we fled the state with our tiny daughter in 2011.

I third that with the arthritis! The last storm that came through began crippling us a few days before it arrived.

The early morning hours are still cooler. Not looking forward to 90 degrees at sunrise or similar.

Well, then, at least something good is coming out of having all this heat.

Bon, I remember that. I hope we never have anything remotely close to 2011 again. On the other hand, no matter how hot any given day has gotten this year, at least we can say "at least it isn't as bad now as it was in 2011".

I'm up and ready to head out to the garden as soon as it gets light enough to go outdoors. Beating the heat early in the day is about the only option we have now in terms of getting anything done in conditions that are bearable. I hope the early morning hours stay cooler because, sometimes, and at our house it usually happens during the first couple of weeks of August, the nights stop cooling off enough and even the early morning hours aren't very cool.

Dawn

I agree guys, hot in the morning and still hot at dark. But, you gotta get some work done. I think the mornings are best. They seem to,be a little cooler and if we have a little breeze it's not to bad. But it's to wet all morning to mow so I wait till evening to do that.

Dawn, I am so blessed to not have snakes. Stay safe.

i guess the heat must be keeping my hands from hurting. I can't really tell when the whole body is soaking wet.

we have about 6-10 days of corn silage cutting coming up and I am not looking forward to it. There is no stopping and coming in at noon, at least everybody will be in cabs with air that helps.

everybody try to stay cool

Ugh. Heat. Complain here. Does it every year. Still hate it. Now that I'm more active, I really hate it.

Yup, the only good thing with this heat is:

No arthritis pain!

Sometimes you have to take the good with the bad.

Moni

Today felt a little better so I hope that's a good sign. It was only 100 degrees and I think our max heat index was only 105. That's not bad compared to some days last week. It felt really nice around sunrise. Maybe 73 degrees or so. I didn't water the garden and the pepper plants wilted badly but they recovered, mostly, before sunset. I'll check the soil tomorrow and see how dry it is.

Three fire calls in three days---none of them grass fires---so my concern level about the grass fire risk is rising. I need to mow tomorrow, if possible, because some of our fields now are more brown than green. I cannot believe we have gone from all that flooding and mud and green, green, green everything to this dryness and heat in such a short period of time.

it does seem better this week. I am finishing the remodel on my camper. My son moved it out front so its in the shade in the afternoon. I still have no electric in there so no A/C but I keep the fans going. Just last minute cleaning and a few paint touch ups and then moving in. It will be fun to see what I can fit in there LOL

While I still have a little muddy areas, they are going away quickly. I did manage to get all my hay moved and have been spot spraying some cuckleburs. They have sky rocketed in this heat. I'll have another go at them in the morning to see which ones are curling over and which ones I missed. Usually by 10 I am ready to call it a day in this heat.

On a brighter side I don't have to mow the yard every other day but the pastures could sure use a drink. I have been rotating the cows but the grass is just not growing in this hot dry period.They seem to be lounging around under the shade most of the time.

The garden is still producing tomatoes and peppers and okra. Squash has been long gone due to squash bugs. Cucumbers are still cranking out more than we can eat and they are getting a little bitter.

Grasshoppers have eat the sunflowers down to the stalk. This place has always had lots of grasshoppers as long as I can remember.

Kim, what an adventure you'll have with the camper!

Robert, me too! If I stay out past 10 am in this heat, I tend to get too hot and regret it.

I'm still getting peppers and tomatoes too, but not much else. I do have cantaloupes and icebox melons forming on plants and some are about half their mature size but we won't be harvesting any for a while yet. I have tons and tons of flowers in bloom in the veggie garden so it is full of bees, other pollinators, butterflies and hummingbirds. The wild flowers in the fields aren't blooming any more except for one late Indian paintbrush, some clasping leaf coneflowers and some of the native sennas.

We have a little and fairly young possum out in the yard every night around 7 pm hunting for food. I hope he is finding and eating the baby timber rattlers currently plaguing us.

I mowed a while last night. I am finally beginning to see the cicada waps, they seem a little late. I was stirring up the nats and mosquitoes so the birds,we're all around the mower, I looked like the pide pipper of bird town. I came around the end of the barn scared the Donkeys, cats and rabbits, they scattered in four directions. Finished mowing this morning about 11:00 and yes it was hot!!

The custom corn cutters are due in today. We will start full out in the morning. Hope we miss the rain at the end of the week, cooler would be nice, wet not so much.

my daughter has minor surgery on Friday so I will be with her at the hospital instead of the corn field. I really don't care for hospitals but at least it will be cool. I will have my grandson Wed. And Thurs. So I am sure we will be out watching all the action. He loves to watch the big machines cut and the semis unload. He is in overdrive till they leave, just like his Pop.

just another week on the farm. I knew I should have listened to my mother!!! HA HA

Everybody try to stay cool.

Dragonflies are everywhere! And the mosquito population is notably reduced. I love those bugs. I see a dragonfly every 5 feet. It's awesome. Must have been the rains.

Dragonflies are one of my favorite beneficial insects both in the garden and just around the place in general. We always have tons of them, but in rainy years we have more than in dry years. In 2011 I kept kids' wading pools and other containers filled for them and stuck bamboo stakes in the ground near the watering holes so they could perch on the stakes. Often they perch on cattails or tall grasses, but we didn't have anything tall that year since nothing was growing.....and anything that had gotten tall in early spring before rain stopped falling was deliberately cut down to lower available fuel for fires.

I haven't seen any mosquitoes in 2 or 3 weeks at least----ever since it stopped raining here. I know they are around in general because some of the trapped ones in areas close to our county have tested positive for West Nile virus. I give the dragonflies and damselflies lots of credit for helping control the mosquito population. The purple martins also make a huge difference in the mosquito population but ours have headed south, so now it is up to the other birds, the bats and the dragonflies and damselflies.

IT IS NOW. DANG.

I still am not seeing many mosquitoes except very early in the day when I first go outdoors. Since it has been so hot and dry, their numbers here have dropped tremendously, and the dragonflies and bats must be doing a great job of controlling them still. Mosquitoes trapped near our county still are testing positive for West Nile, so the fewer skeeters we have, the better. I am kind of surprised that they haven't eaten me alive this year like they usually do since we had flooding and standing water for a couple of months. I do toss Mosquito bits (containing Bt 'israelensis') into standing water and that keeps their population down quite a bit.

Dragonflies! I leave the clothespins on the clothes line. My clothesline is enviable as it spans the width of the yard. An army of defensive dragonflies perch atop all the clothespins with their rears in the air catching warmth off a waning sun. I've tried to take a picture, but the photos don't do it justice. Dragonflies are territorial and will only perch about 4' from each other.

It feels like an oven out there. The raccoons have been busy in my chicken yards. 5 coons in 2 days.

We have been watering , but it is being dried out just as fast.

I have not planted anything for fall in this heat. I dought if I could get anything to germinate .

I finally got a new phone and can send replies from it now.

I fondly remember last May, when I was mowing in jeans and a sweatshirt. This sitting in the house all afternoon is driving me nuts!!!! I wait all afternoon to go back outside at 7;30 and it is still stifling hot. It's not even cooling off overnight, but the mornings are ok.

I have seen several dragonflies late in the evening, with the frogs.

I haven't been botherd by mosqitoes either, I just knew we would be carried off by them when they all hatched from the rains. Several people have said so also, I wonder where they all went, I can't imagine the frogs, dragonflies or birds have kept them in check???

There are so may things on sale at the garden centers but I will not put anything in the ground in this heat. I need to transplant several daylillies that I put in half barrels this spring, but again the heat is just to much. I have the spot picked out in the yard but I just walk by and think of all the work to open a new bed and just walk on by. I really need to get started so when the time is right I will be ready to transplant.

When this heat breaks I will be so busy I'll think it's spring. HA HA

hope we all cool off and get a drink this week

stockergal, Sitting indoors trying to stay cool makes me crazy too. Our heat is supposed to break after today, and I hope it does.

Of course, when the fire pagers go off and we run out of the nice air-conditioned house and into the heat outdoors, I instantly remember why we were staying indoors and wish I could go back there. It only takes about 5 seconds for me to regret walking out that door into the heat! lol.

One part of our fire station (the kitchen and conference/training room) is air-conditioned and, after yesterday's grass fire, I tried to stay in there and do work in there while most of the firefighters were out in the station bays working on fire trucks and refilling them with water and such. Given a choice between being in a big, hot unheated metal building in 100+ temperatures or being in the walled-off kitchen where there is AC? Guess which one I'm going to choose every single time.

A couple of days ago I went out to the garden to harvest melons and peppers. It was around 6:30 a.m. and was only 80 degrees so it felt cool and pleasant. Then I started weeding. Before I knew it, it was 10:30 a.m. and in the low 90s with an heat index in the upper 90s and I was too hot and miserable. I went indoors feeling so defeated by the heat. That's what happens when you let your enthusiasm for gardening overrule the part of your brain that is telling you to stay out of the heat. I learned my lesson and have tried to stay indoors as much as possible since then. I cannot believe how quickly it has been heating up. I'm ready for the heat to break. One more day here and things should get a little better. Our chance of rain is incredibly low and, if any falls, it is expected to be 1/10th of an inch or less, so the best we can hope for is that rain-cooled air from heavier rain somewhere else in OK will at least make us feel a little cooler.

Dawn