Sun, 28 Jun 2009
Heat Wave
So, you don't have to be super-creative to imagine what a heat wave in the summer in Texas is like. It's like 10 degrees hotter than normal. This is a picture of my cat, Remmy, today. His posture pretty much sums up what everyone around here is feeling like. We are having record heat, which we had last year at this time too. I can tell that global warming is at work in Austin. Now we have had three years in a row of very mild winters with freak late freezes, horrible storms with huge hail and record breaking heat early in the summer. Not to mention a devestating, record-breaking drought that is going on its third year. Certain plants like avocados and Texas olive, which couldn't be grown this far north reliably because of winter freezes a few years ago are now growing happily in Austin. I had a pepper plant overwinter easily in my garden last year, normally they die during the first freeze. Today I am not going outside unless I have to, and the national weather service issued a heat advisory, asking folks to stay inside in air conditioning if they can. Most of my landscape plants are doing ok- my coneflowers, yarrow, tansy and gaura are blooming happily like nothing is wrong. The veggie garden is looking pretty bad, and I am thinking about abandoning it because I don't think I can water it enough. I have some cukes, peppers and eggplants, which are doing kind of ok, and some chard and strawberries that are certainly doomed. Some of my friends told me they abandoned their veggie gardens for the summer. Other friends are still growing okra and black eye peas, but I'm not crazy about either one of those foods so I tend to let the garden rest in the summer too. I am interested in getting some eggplants and they will eventually produce fruit during the heat so I can't decide if I should let them die or not. I guess we'll see how I feel. I am fairly certain that all of our St. Augustine turfgrass will die soon, especially because one huge tree just died in our front yard and there is way, way less shade than last year. I kind of refuse to water the grass too. I think it's wasteful, but that is just my opinion. However, I am getting a bumper crop of figs, I think they like the heat! They taste like honey and my hubby and I have been stuffing ourselves silly with them.
posted at: 19:01 | path: /colleen0605 | link for this entry