Please no, I didn't order the usual!

Can’t sleep, listening to music, riding out some new covid flare that basically makes everything more painful, too loud, and too bright (turning off some lights and down some music right now omg), and I apologize for sending out another post so soon, but I just want to share something about living in Austin that has been driving me CRAZY for decades. This happens all the time, I swear we’re cursed. Watch this storm totally shun Austin during the longest drought we’ve had since 1910.

I screamed out loud when I saw this earlier.1

“tHeRe’S a 40% ChAnCe Of RaIn, haha, nevermind — gotcha!”

We’re all turning into the Joker now. I feel like I’m documenting our slow descent into madness along with tallying endless days of drought and my alliance with the paper wasps over the back steps.

I write about how hot it is too much, at least half of these posts so far, how dry, how the ground has been covered in delicate, crispy golden leaves as though simulating Fall in mid-July to September with cornflakes and potato chips, how keeping the garden alive at this point is a little bit triage and a lot of being too hard-headed to give up on getting a seed from every survivor2. When I try not to write about it, things like that last weird post about melted chocolate happen.

All our rain chances for the week went from “very likely!” to “well … we’ll see.”It has been over 100°F for 70 days so far, 40 of them were over 105°, and 45 were in a row. All our brains are fried. We had a light passing storm for about 45 minutes a few weeks ago.

Anyway, here’s an Apocalypse gardening tip:

If it is 105° every damn day and never rains (bless your soul), if you have a bunch of big wash tubs or kiddie pools and container plants (permeable containers, clay pots, plastic nursery pots, anything with holes, cloth grow bags), you can water everything by filling the tub with as many plants as will fit and water up to the rim of the shortest pot. It will seem like a lot of water, but trust me I still have tomatoes, eggplant, a fig tree, and some other stuff and some of these were in bad shape before doing this. Everything is too heat stressed to make anything edible, but weather permitting they will be able to thrive in the fall.

The okra in the ground is still alive but all the flowers dropped from the heat before they could bloom. When you lose okra you know you’re living on the sun.