95 Never Felt Better

The last couple of days have been wonderful. The temperature here has been in the mid to high 90's. It may not sound that great, but I never realized how refreshing and cool 95 was until I had to suffer through 10 days straight of temperatures above 100 degrees. I don't know if many people have been paying that much attention, but it has been hell this summer in the South. Here is a US Drought Monitor.

I went to the Congaree National Swamp on Saturday and on the way there I passed through a very rural area dotted with farms, except these farms were skeletons. I passed field after field of dead and dried up corn fields. It almost looked as if someone set them all on fire. It was bad. I also read a story the other day about dairy farmers in South Carolina that were just having trouble keeping their cows alive. At the time, they were losing several cows a day. Not to mention that they were no longer getting much, if any, milk out of them. The same things are happening in Alabama and other SE states. Along with this, Texas has been drenched with rain all summer. I wonder if that is also having detrimental effects on farmers and agriculture in general.

I thought about all of this when I ran across this post at Blognonymous. The graphic he has up on rising food prices is alarming. How much worse is it going to get when we really start feeling the effects of a disastrous summer growing season?

On a similar topic, my garden is barely hanging on. I guess 10 days straight of record breaking heat will do that. My okra and a few tomato plants are doing pretty well, but everything else in my garden is basically gone. My container garden is doing pretty well also. I can move them into the shade when it gets too hot. We had our first rain in a month Friday. I hope it won't be another month before we get some more.

Tomorrow is supposed to be over 100 again. Hopefully, this will be a one day thing. I am just now getting used to not sweating all day in my own house.