West Ky. Drought

Well, we've slipped into the classification of extreme drought here in my area of w. Ky. I live in the 2nd county down on the extreme western edge of Kentucky.

Since I'm not a farmer, it's not impacting me as dreadfully as it is impacting the farmers. The problem on my end is the heat rather than the drought. It has been in triple digits for days upon endless days. On the days it doesn't make it into triple digits, it doesn't make it below 95F.

As I said in an earlier post, I've abandoned my garden to the grass. For years I've not gone outdoors much in the summer. Something went whacko whacko with my internal thermostat some years ago, and I became so intolerant to heat that it crippled me in the depths of high summer. High summer used to be August. What I consider high summer is above 95F. This year, it's been high summer almost since May.

After I first moved in with my parents, the indoor temperature my father wanted to keep the house nearly killed me. He stayed in one room that used to be called the breezeway, one room between the garage and the house. In the middle of summer, I would walk into it, and he would have the wall heater on and be sitting in his chair in front of the TV, and he would be in a t-shirt, a shirt, and a fur-lined hoodie with the hood pulled up. The temperature in the room would be no less than 85F. He would be complaining it was cold.

Mom and I tried to keep the rest of the house at a temperature we could tolerate, and he would be moaning and bitching about how cold it was - at 75F. When I first moved in, 75F nearly immobilized me. As time went on, I became accustomed to it, and began to inch it up more towards 80.

So I was really tickled contemplating my first garden in years. I had become acclimated to higher temps and would be able to handle things. Especially, I'd be able to since planting in late April, early May, meant the temps wouldn't become unbearable to me until the end of July, beginning of August, and nearly everything I wanted to plant would be in by then.

Lo, and behold, we get the year of breaking the high temperature records of over 1,400 high temp records across the US. By the second week of June, weeding the garden was intolerable to me.

I really, really, really don't like this weather. Really.

Drought

Here are a few quick posts, put under different headings to keep them separate. It's nice to know that I'm not whacked in my memory of the way the weather used to be. Here is a fantastic map showing what the state of drought is in my area: http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/

When Max first emailed me the link, we were in a severe drought. That was 4-5 days ago. Now we're in an extreme drought. I saved the image to preserve it, as the link will update and change through time.

It's so dry, I'm watering the garden on nearly a nightly basis. It's so friggin' hot I'm contemplating moving to Canada. As an alternative, the mountains are beginning to be appealing, and that's almost a miracle as I really, truly don't like mountains. However, a nice mountain in east Tennessee is becoming more and more appealing. Way up high and cool. Oh, that's right. I can't go anywhere in the winter. But, but, but, I can go out of the house in the summer. What a dilemma.