S4P

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Sucker for punishment!  I know - not the most inspired graphics and I spent so much time searching the web for these pictures that I forgot what I was trying to illustrate.  I'm blaming it on one of my huge HUGE sinus infections.  Aside from getting to sleep all day in the air conditioning, it pretty much takes all my brain matter and turns it to mush. 

I may have reached a plateau this year:  I'm growing less fond of July.  Getting up at 4:00 am to take garden pictures, so as not to go into heat stroke, has lost it's charm (did it ever have charm?)

Looking at the front porch (facing south) thermometer and it reads 105 degrees, is just wrong for Illinois.

My rain gauges have more Japanese Beetles in them than water and sets a bad omen for crops.

Buying a hibiscus bush last week was either an exercise in optimism or just plain crazy.  I'm already watering too much and  I'm loosing this battle.  Have you ever noticed the sound of water being sucked into parched ground is the same sound as money being sucked into a black hole?

Apparently, some things are going to die.  We've lost a pine and others are either being forced into an early fall, their shedding leaves to conserve water or their coughing up their last hurrah.

"J" adjusting well to AC

Bitsey, my little cat, doesn't take the heat well.  Left out too long and she will be crying and panting.  Left outside too long, I'll be crying and panting  Even our outside cat, "J", has decided she is pretty good with being inside for awhile.

Have you noticed if we have a 85 degree day, people are high fiving the blast of arctic air?

Do residents of the humid and hot areas of this world suffer and complain like we do in July?  Are they tougher? Acclimated?  Thinner blood? 

Is it harder to tolerate the hot weather because we have become so used to air conditioning? 

Are we simply not made from the tough genes are ancestors were made and have become a society of mambly pambly wimps.  (OK that was seriously a brain mush statement I'm crediting to William Shatner in Boston Legal.)

To add to my thinly veiled complaining:  Blogs are now being attacked under the guise of "let's all be friends".  Someone writes a comment on a blog article that goes something like this:  "I love your blog and think you will love mine, too.  I will add your blog to mine and you do the same."  Note that I have written this quote using the correct English grammar which is never the case.  Their blogs have nothing to do with gardening, and have only one purpose.  Every time someone clicks on their blog site, they receive money.  Yeah, let's be friends and I make money off you.

Now back to S4P - I still have no idea but I'm not taking the pictures off this story because I'm hot and cranky and taking azithromygin (I know you don't care the name but just wanted to type it out because it sounds like some kind of moonshine).