Honestly...we like to think we are pretty tough. We iowans deal with tornadoes. Thunderstorms, ice storms, and blizzards. It's over 100 in the summers at times, and below 0 in the winters. We dress accordingly, make snide comments and jokes, and mostly deal with it. But when any one particular weather pattern drags on too long, well... Some of us start to get a little narky about it.

Today it was 103, with heat index of 125. At those temps, you just sweat. You sweat indoors. You sweat in the shade. You sweat standing still. And if you try to, you know... Move around and do stuff? You're just gonna be soaked.

And the problem is... The air is so humid, the sweating doesn't actually cool your body properly. You gotta be very careful about heatstroke.

It's been super humid/hot for a couple of weeks now, and we are OVER it. And the worst part is...August isn't even here! That's when we tend to get the worst of the heat and humidity.

The garden, frankly, is loving it. We've had just enough rain at all the right times, and the plants are going all crazy and jungle-like.

This zucchini both terrifies and impresses me. It's already as big as a softball and the FLOWER IS STILL
SHOWING. Which, I'm assuming, means it grew that large in a day or two. No wonder people always have those baseball-bat sized zucchini to give away....

We took our lawn mower deck into the local John Deere dealer to have new blades put on.

And saw some really, really big machinery.

This bumper sticker made me giggle. I really love rural America.

First tomatoes!

After the mower was fixed, Donna attempted to give herself heatstroke by mowing all afternoon in super crazy hot weather....after pulling weeds all morning in crazy hot weather.

She mostly didn't succeed.

She did take a break for some Thai iced coffee and spicy peanut stirfry noodles.

Abby thinks this "being outside in the heat" nonsense is ridiculous, and watches us from the cool air-conditioned spaces.

We spent a pleasant evening at the Panora Art In The Park event, and had an excellent young helper.

These lilies are as tall as me!

Tuesday, we made a lot of stuff, and packed a lot of orders.

Suddenly, everything in the garden is going completely bonkers. The bee balm exploded into bloom.

The annual herbs and veggies have taken hold and are starting to grow really well.

The blueberry bushes I planted last week seem to be doing well so far (crosses fingers and knocks on wood).

Thai basil is looking lush and beautiful!

And the tomatoes are doing great!!!

We are growing potatoes vertically. Or trying to anyway. We found some round wire cages on the curb this spring (yay curb crawling!) and got a ten lb bag of seed taters at an Amish store for $3.75. We shared the taters with our friend Becky, so we probably planted 6-7 lbs in five round cages. Put cardboard under the cages to supress weeds, threw the cut up seed potatoes on top, and covered with leaves and old straw. That's it! As the potato plants grow, we add more straw or old hay. I've covered them twice do far and as you can see they are ready for another layer.

Tomatoes are doing well, we will have to think about stringing them up soon.

This ambitious little pepper plant has a pepper on it already.

BABY PEACHES!!!

The very first St. Johns Wort blossoms!

Dante is a faithful (and talkative) garden helper.

The big, icky, super-duper sweaty project today was hauling lots of very heavy barn refuse (MAN those mini horses produce a lot of manure) out to the raspberry patch. Donna weeded, and Maggie mulched. It wasn't very hot - maybe lower 80's? - but the humidity was 91 percent and the sweat was literally dripping off us. Sweaty drippy manure-covered us. That's sexy farm life for ya. There's at least another 3/4 left to do, too. Here's hoping the berries are plentiful next year!!