Heat Continues

Above: A wilted gourd vine with today's afternoon thermometer reading.

At the nearest weather station it officially only got up to 94° F. (34.4° C.) today. . . but it felt much hotter. The dew point was around 61° which made for a relative humidity of about 34%. . .low humidity for a Central Florida summer day. Had the dew point been higher it would have felt even hotter.

The plants all seem to be giving up at this point in this long, painful dry. I pamper some plants while others are left to fend for themselves. . . survival of the fittest. I'm letting the last of the sunflowers die and dry in the heat. Below a trio of flowers makes a last attempt at reproduction. . . and produces some really puny flowers for early June.



Below: I pamper my gourd vines (Lagenaria siceraria (Molina) Standl.) hoping that they'll survive until the end of the dry. Here my hand with one of the gourd leaves. This vine I'm training over the swing above the lake.



Below: The vine is reaching up about 10' to the security light now. I water it daily. . .hoping it will survive.



Below: Where's the lake? This is the lowest I've ever seen the water in the 17 years we've lived in this spot. It will take a mighty flood to refill the lakes now.



Below: Another view of the lake from higher on the berm near the house. A little water is visible far in the distance.



Below: Among other wildlife trapped in the ponds . . . far from the lake. . . are some large American Bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana). This frog is generally found in large, permanent water bodies, swamps, ponds, or lakes where it lives along the shoreline.

All of the animals living in the ponds are now subsisting on a diet of cat food. I've given up on the pricier reptile food. I throw it by the hands full into the ponds and it quickly disappears. They are not shy about wanting to eat.



Currently our only real hope of a break in this weather pattern is Invest 94 as the National Hurricane Center has dubbed the large, wet, Caribbean disturbance currently situated south of Jamaica. Below: At 8:00 pm tonight all of the computer models were indicating that should this weather system develop it will head in the general direction of the Florida Peninsula.

The points on this map are 12 hours apart (the map represents the next 4 days) . . . so a lot can change in that time. For now NOAA is predicting nearly zero chance of rain in our future.



Below: I worked on repairing and replacing gutters today despite the brutal heat. I have high hopes for heavy rains in our future and I want to be prepared. In this image I reattached gutters that were removed to install new facia on the house in Spring. It was a difficult task to accomplish alone. . . but I got it done. Now the gutters just need a good coat of primer and paint and we'll be ready for heavy rains on this side of the house. One of the master bathroom windows is in the left of the image. . . facing north.



On the sides of the house I'm installing all new gutters to protect the new wood and paint job below. Here I've just installed a 10' section with downspout over an architectural feature on the east side of the house. This section cost about $60. . . and took. . . I don't want to admit how long it took to get it up there correctly. Hours?

This side of the house has all been repaired and primed. Now it needs a coat of paint.