Well, after I started watering EVERY morning, things are going a bit better in the garden. And, I leave the water on a slow-slow-slow soak on the grapes and elderberries. Have LOTS of grapes and elderberries!!
I also have quite a few cantaloupes looking like they are going to ripen, which is ABSOLUTELY DELIGHTFUL!! The tomatoes are coming along, but slowly. They are on the plants, but I have yet to get a ripe one!! My peppers look stunted and are just sitting there. The cucumbers are going like gangbusters and myself and the adolescent chicks are enjoying them!!
I am WANTING to get some Red and Idaho potatoes in, but I have to get the bed ready, and need to work in a LOT of mulch and rabbit manure.
My pear trees, which were growing magnificently, appear to have died from the heat....they were watered daily, but ended up withering and dying. I do have one left that is doing well, but I have it in full sun only about 6 hours a day.
This has been a VERY hard summer, quite unlike any I have experienced since moving to this area....
And the heat has almost done me in, after working in the garden and my core temperature getting pretty UP THERE, I go into the RV, but along about 3PM, the temp in there goes up to about 80-85. Hard to restore energy and strength when there is little relief from the heat. I REALLY DON'T SEE how our ancestors did it?? I suppose if you have never lived in air conditioning, you don't miss it. As a kid, we had no A/C......not at home or school and we just "dealt with it." My Dad, worked in A/C at Boeing, and came home every night to our VERY HOT house....but he was an AWESOME man anyway. My mother had no quarter from the heat....doing all the housework, cooking and hanging out the clothes!! I must say, my respect for both of them has gone up since I became an OLD FART myself!!