Heat

It's been exceedingly hot the last couple of days, today we are supposed to get up to about 110 degrees. I'm convinced that people who say they prefer heat to cold must spend most of their time in air conditioned buildings. We have a swamp cooler instead of ac, like most people in this area, and although we are luck to have a very good swamp cooler it just doesn't do as good of a job as ac. The only real upside is that it's really cheap to run.

For those that aren't familiar with these types of coolers I'll give a quick run down on how they work. Inside the metal box is a series of pads that are made up of a paper-like material. Water is run into those pads and air is forced through the wet pads. It's amazing how cool the air is that comes out, it's also humid air which is great in such a dry area. This is why this type of cooling doesn't work in humid climates, there is already too much moisture in the air. Last year we were stuck with fans only and no cooler at all. Lucky for us the whole thing only takes a little bit of water.

Along with the heat and drooping plants we are having to contend with a thief. Something is uprooting my squash plants and stealing tomato plants. Over the last 3 days we have lost 4 different plants. The squash plants get broken off at the roots and left on the ground, but the tomato plant was pulled clean out and taken. I have no idea what could be doing this. The garden that's being ransacked is right next to the horse's pen so whatever it is isn't scared of the horse. Now I'm glad I have three separate places with squash plants. At the time I planted them I was frustrated with the distance between each area but now I think it's the only thing saving the rest of them from being destroyed. We aren't getting very many zucchini off each plant so it's frustrating to lose so many.

Already I'm trying to plan to see if we can move everything next year. I'm also finding that we are going to have to adjust the kinds of things we want to grow. The tomato plants continue to grow but haven't produced anything and we didn't get any beans before the plants died. None of the lettuce survived past the first cutting and it's been too hot to try to plant more. On the whole all we've gotten is a few yellow squash, a few zucchini, and one bowl of lettuce. The dirt just isn't very good and I don't think we have the means to improve it enough. I'll probably try again next year or maybe even in the fall but right now I'm just frustrated.