I hope the third time is the charm. This is such a difficult year to accomplish anything, especially the last few weeks.

At least you'll have the tomato volunteers. I hope they are Black Cherry and SunGold since both are so yummy.

It is so hot here and I am so distracted by the heat and the fires, and the struggle to keep poulty arrive in temperatures running around 112 degrees the last few days, that I'm not even thinking much about the fall garden or the winter one either.

They keep putting a cool day (with cool meaning less than 105 degrees) out there 3 or 4 days away, but as that cooler day approached, the forecasted high temp rises and it ends up not being cooler. Every time that happens, I shake my head and think that the August cool down may not happen. We may roast all month and not really cool down until September. It seems like I just cannot get in the mood to start anything else for fall or winter unless we get some significant cooling.

Dawn

I don't know what the fall of 80 was like in other areas of the state, but here the 100s lingered into Sept--and school started midAug. That was the last year the grade school went without AC. The next year every room had a room AC in a window. The west facing library at the grade school, with a full bank of windows of course, got up to 120 F. We couldn't have anyone in there after lunch. They moved us over to the gym on the east side of the building--without many windows--until the weather cooled off. If there had been someone at the school overnight to oversee open windows it wouldn't have been so bad, but they closed the whole thing up tight at 4 pm. So at 7 am when they opened it back up, it was already 15 degrees hotter than outside.

Oh, I remember the summer of 1980 too. It was so hot, and dry, and the ground was cracked all over. We had planted about 200 tree seedlings, and 4 survived.

I just told someone that this years summer reminds me of 1980.

Moni

Gee, I don't remember the heatwave during the summer of 1980, maybe I was too young.....or maybe I moved back to Alaska that year. LOL

I remember the summer of 1980 too. For us down here in southern OK, the summer of 2011 was worse here than the summer of 1980 was in Fort Worth. Both were ridiculously hot, but I think 2011 was hotter longer. Until the last 7-10 days or so, I felt like 2012 had not been quite as hot on a daily basis as 2011. After the blazing hot temps that have hit 110-112.9 for the last 10 days, I feel like 2012 has been hotter for us here in Love County. We've had more rain this year though, not that I can tell it has helped. At this point, everything is pretty brown and crunchy and looks about as bad as last year.

If this is the new normal, I do not like it at all.

All of us now need to worry as much about the dry countryside and fire risk as the dry gardens. What has happened in this state with wildfires in the last 3 or 4 days is horrifying.

Carol, I keep telling Tim and Chris I'd like to move to Alaska. They just shake their heads because they know I never could tolerate the cold.

Dawn

Dawn, the place to move to is Washington--Puget Sound area. IT does get hot, hit 100 in 09 when we were there--for about 3 days. But then back to high 60s overnight. Most people there don't have AC because they need it so seldom. It doesn't get very cold in the winters either. Puget Sound area is zone 8. Of course it is incredibly congested.

Dorothy, I thought about that area. I have friends and former Oklahoma neighbors on Bainbridge Island, and they love it. They hardly ever come back to Oklahoma to visit since they moved there, not that a person could blame them.

The congestion would bother me. I like rural, lightly populated areas.

Dawn