Summer Heat and Growing Your Own Food

Summer's back in town!
Hard to miss the 100+ days. I used to really complain about it, but then we had a chance to visit Florida and Virginia-that's hot. Here, no matter how hot it gets in the afternoon, it's always 30F cooler in the morning. In the hot and humid places it is always hot and humid. We would leave the hotel at 8am and be dripping sweat by the time we got to the car. Back to our summer heat...
Summer is not my favorite season. It is easier for me to warm up when I am cold than it is to cool off when I am hot. I endure summer and I look forward to Fall. I am extremely grateful for air conditioning, and for our blessed, cool mornings. I try to get my field and shop work done in the mornings and save office work for the afternoon.

We eat lots of cool meals like pasta salad this time of year. We also enjoy lots of fresh fruits. The yellow peaches are coming on now. Mmmmm yummmy. I love watermelon too. I have been drinking my coffee iced also.

Growing Your Own Food-
Summer gardens seem to be the topic of discussion this week. One book I was reading talked about it, I saw some newspaper articles and a Facebook friend lamented some problems in her garden. Last month I had a discussion with a community advocate about the virtues of urban gardens.

I'll be the first to admit there are few satisfactions like eating a home-grown tomato. I don't know about you, but I was never able to grow anything more in my gardens than a few salad garnishes.
The lesson I learned with my little garden plots when I was growing up in San Diego is that I eat a lot more food than I can produce in a garden patch. I started then to learn an appreciation for the system that produces our food. There are hundreds of millions of us and just a handful of farmers. Less than 2% of us live and work on farms, producing food for everyone else and enough to export too. That is pretty amazing. [Dixie Lee Ray has an amazing quote about that. Maybe I'll share that with you some other time.]

Too all you home gardeners- my sweat stained hat is off to you.

BTW- an update from last week's post on curve balls: I still don't have my tractor back from the shop. We are going to replace the engine [ ouch, that wasn't in the budget.] We hope to get the tractor back this week, which would be nice since we are almost done with our summer tractor work. The cotton is growing fast in this heat and it is time to lay the cotton by and park the tractors until Fall.

I hope y'all have a great week and I hope you can find a cool place to rest.