This may be the summer that breaks me. It has been so hot so far, over 100 by the beginning of June, and not much cooling at night.  I am an outdoors person by nature, but it is just crushing to be outside in the summer when it’s like this.

I try to fit in as much outdoor activity as I can in the morning (even though it’s still hot), but I have to give up a lot of that time to watering, because did I mention? It stopped raining sometime in May. Yes, we have a full-fledged drought going on. I have been trying to keep everything going, especially our stressed elm tree, but now things are so dry that I am watering non-living things too: the foundation (because of this), the front steps (the bottom one has started to separate),  the deck (because the sewer pipe is buried below it and two years ago it broke during a dry spell and cost a couple of thousand dollars to fix). But we’re still getting cracks in the ground in places that are over an inch wide and who knows how deep.

And to make it worse, yesterday and today there has been rain all around us, taunting us. I suspect it is the heat of the city that diverts storms around us (the same thing happened in Houston). This morning I was riding my bike around the lake and the sky got black to the east, south, north and west, and there was lightning close enough that I high-tailed it home, but … nothing. The sun came out as I pulled into the driveway. And now this afternoon I can hear thunder, but only watch the red stuff on the radar detour around my house.