My grade school years were spent in Southern California. I remember spending much of my summers in the community swimming pool – except for the required "time out" every hour or so because of poor air quality. I don't think it was any worse then than this:
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| Yesterday morning |
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| This morning |
Yesterday morning it almost looked foggy in the valley at first, and I noticed a gentle breeze from the north. Before the end of chores that "fog" surrounded us; turned out it was smoke blowing in from wildfires in British Columbia. Today it's even worse, with the addition of smoke from a fire near Mt. Jefferson to our east. My eyes are burning; the critters are all heat-stressed and my asthmatic horse is breathing hard. I wish I had an "ark" so I could take all our animals over to the coast until fall!
The increased haze kept us from getting
quite as hot today, although what's a few degrees when you're already in the triple digits. I have our AC set at 80° and the heat pump runs continuously at that. Last night Rick insisted on turning the thermostat down to 74°(!), even though we have a cool(er) daylight basement we
could sleep in. I guess he's feeling like Mr. Moneybags.... (The dogs and I hung out in the basement when I got home from work this afternoon.)
The vegetable garden is pretty happy with the heat, though, as long as I keep it watered. Yesterday morning I went up to move the hose, and was startled to see some big green beans. I went back to the house for a bowl that almost wasn't big enough:
We'll have some steamed tonight; I'd make dilly beans but I don't have any dill. Last night I made zoodles with pesto from zucchini and basil from our garden, and then mixed up some zucchini black bean burgers for lunches. I'm planning to try
these soon with our eggplant, and we ate up all the snow peas for lunch the other day. A few little tomatoes and sweet peppers are beginning to ripen; I hope they come on strong. I love eating from our garden; it's a pleasure – AND a necessity after spending so much on hay last month!
That's it for now from hot and hazy . . .
5 comments:
Today it is supposed to be cooling down to just the mid 90's. Good grief! I can't wait for the tomatoes to start really coming on.
Stay cool!
Deju vu all over again, eh? Yes, it's hot and hot where I'm moving but there's is air conditioning so it'll work out. Like you, I like basements and will have a living area set up in the new basement. I do not like electricity bills! lol
We are smoked out too from the BC wildfires. So crazy! your green beans look yummy! I just harvested a few tonight along with a few other goodies from the garden (will be sharing the photo soon). I LOVE dilly beans and have tons of dill but few beans. We need to swap! haha!
just found your blog and am following. Looking forward to getting to know you more :)
~ Emily from So Sunny Day
What a wealth of green beans! Yum! I received a small bag of green beans in our CSA veggie delivery this week. I haven't used them yet though. I will most likely just steam them and have them with a bit of butter. My tomato plant here is about a foot tall and hasn't had any flowers yet. It's an
indeterminant variety, so you can just imagine how not-warm of a summer we've been having!
Thanks for your comment on my blog - the entirety of PEI has red sand and red soil. It is very unusual. Apparently it is due to a high iron oxide content. The potato fields (which are everywhere there) are amazing, just vast tracts of red, hilled soil rows.
I think the weather patterns have imbibed a bit too much. It's 68 and cloudy here in the midwest. You've somehow gotten our heat and humidity. Hope it cools down for you soon!
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