But I am not.
It’s hot here.
I know, I know. I live in Mississippi, and it’s August. What do you expect?
Actually, most summers are not horrible here. There are usually enough thunderstorms and cloud cover to keep it from getting too hot for too long – most days are around 90 to 93. It IS humid here, but it means we have depths of green in our landscape that are only dreamt of elsewhere.
But this summer is brutal.
The heat index here has been over 100 for weeks. The last few days the actual temperature has been over 100. And what’s worse, the nighttime temps have been hot as well – this morning at 5:30 when I got up, it was 80 degrees outside.
When it’s that hot, nothing gets a chance to recover, including us. Our house is going to be 78 degrees inside by 4PM, with the AC running full blast. It just can’t keep up.
We desperately need rain, too. It hasn’t rained any significant amount in almost six weeks. Even the most drought resistant shrubs in my yard are looking peaked. We are, in short, miserable. We are all miserable.
We had a severe drought in 2024, and it weakened lots of pine trees, which were then more susceptible to southern pine beetles. There are now dead pine snags all over Jackson in testimony to the drought of 2024.
I have 7 pine trees on my property that all survived the 2024 drought. I hope they survive this one, too. Hell, I hope I survive it.
I’m always attracted to the flowers that seem to thrive despite the harsh weather. Like the phlox in the front yard – paniculata, I think. I grabbed several of them last year at a native plant sale. There was no editing on that photo up top – it really is that rich and vibrant in the midst of no water or care for six weeks.
This is one reason to grow native plants – they have evolved over generations to be able to thrive here. It draws in hummingbirds and bees and butterflies, and it comes back reliably year after year.
I have just talked myself into growing more of that for next year. My existing clumps are not yet big enough to divide, but I think it’s easy to grow from seed.