This week we've been hitting record highs for the area and I've experienced the hottest temps that I can remember in my lifetime. It was 117 when I was running errands in Fort Smith on Tuesday and our lowest high has been 108. This has been our roughest week yet. The inside of the house has been getting up to 97 and 99 because the two little window units we have are designed for small rooms, not 640 sq ft of mostly open space. We have been receiving very light rain in the evenings with wind that cool things down to the 90s and 80s and we've only had one almost unbearable night so far. It's that humidity though that is making the days so difficult.
Our female Great Pyrenees, Kira, is old (she'll be 10 in October) and hasn't always had the best health and has an incredibly weak bladder, so I'm having to take her out to pee every 30 minutes and keep a close eye on her with the heat. I have a hard time handling heat myself, so I'm instantly sick to my stomach every time I take her out and I've had some horrible migraines the past couple of weeks, although they seem to be tolerable on the days I get to stay home and not be out in the heat for more than a couple of minutes at a time.
We have most of the wall insulation up, however we don't have a ceiling up yet so that is a big contributor to the hot temps inside, plus it's going to be hard no matter what when it's over 105 outside. It's sad that 105 sounds tolerable and 100 sounds down right cold these days.
My garden this summer has been in containers. I'm shocked that almost everything is still alive. I've lost my dill, cilantro, one tomato plant and a moss rose, but I still have two tomato plants (not that they are really producing, I've gotten 5 fruit off them but they weren't even edible), two basil (one sweet and one lemon), sage, a moss rose, a pecan seedling, a handful of redbud seedlings (they are really struggling though), and 4 pumpkin seedlings (I just started them 2-3 weeks ago just to see if they can produce by our first frost).We're on the southeast side of the mountain, so we start getting shade around 6pm and I think that is what has saved my plants.
It's been too hot to start the square foot garden beds, and seeing how money is tight since we're still recovering from moving, we've decided to build the beds with pine and when the time comes to replace them we'll use either cedar or cinder blocks.
We bought the toilet last weekend!!! We haven't installed it yet. We still have plumbing to run, holes to drill, and water to haul so we can use it, but we have it!
In all we might not be getting much accomplished lately and just struggling to get our day to day things done, but we're hanging in there. I'm just grateful that we do have electricity and a/c units that I can crash in front of on the couch during the day and get caught up on several baby blankets I have to make. There are so many people out there who aren't as blessed as we are, I really am thankful for what we have.
