Under the heat dome

Lest you think that I just invented the term "heat dome," please rest assured that I am not that clever. It's something that's been coined and in use for awhile now, and I just happen to be experiencing it in person right now.

I feel like I talk about the weather too much on this blog, but to hell with it, it's been brutal. For the past two weeks, the temperature hasn't been under 95, and for a majority of that time the heat index (temperature plus humidity/etc) has made it feel like 110 degrees or more. For reference, the other night I went jogging at 7:45 p.m. and the heat index was still 113. Over the course of 4 miles (and <> 28 minutes), I lost almost 3 pounds. No kidding, I weighed myself before and after.

Needless to say, I've been doing my best to stay cool. This involves lots of light colors and lots of light fabrics. Here is a fairly typical example of my wardrobe lately:


On this particular day, it was a short-sleeved pink linen shirt from Lands' End (thrifted for $2) paired with some Ralph Lauren seersucker pants (also thrifted, for $4) and a great striped d-ring belt that I just snagged last week.


Down below, I wore a pair of Generic Surplus boat shoes, another fairly recent pickup that I got from Gilt Groupe. Normally I eschew even their "discount" prices and rarely find anything that even fits me, but in this case ($29 - $25 credit + $6 shipping = $10), I simply couldn't pass up the navy boats.

The heat shows no sign of stopping, so I'm going to keep on using it as an excuse to break out some light-hearted color combinations. If I'm sweating, I might as well have fun doing so.

It's easy being green

I think I've made mention of it a couple times in posts previous, but we've had a rather hot and humid spring and summer so far. There have been huge dumps of rain followed by pot-boiling temperatures, with neither lasting for too long, but close enough together to create days where it feels like you're swimming in a crock pot.

Oh, and that same weather cycle has been insanely good for our garden. Check out the photo in this post from nearly exactly 3 months ago. Then, look at the photo below taken from the same exact spot.


This is one of our 8x8' garden beds, and it has 9 tomato plants of different variety, a big bush of basil, and 3 green peppers (which you can't see). The scarecrow is still in there, he's just dwarfed by the plants themselves, some of where are nearing my height.


This is another of the garden beds, the one pictured off to the left in the previous shot. This 4x8" bed houses 2 more pepper plants, another big bush of basil, 2 tomatillo plants, and 4 roma tomato plants. In other beds (4 more not pictured), we have one dedicated to herbs, one with more romas and some swiss chard, one dormant (which housed lettuce and spinach that has gone to seed and will be replanted in the fall) and a last one with cucumbers.


Around the edges of our yard (and taking over parts of it already) are viney plants, including the aforementioned pie pumpkin vines, as well as 4 different butternut squash. We'll use a lot of them for ourselves and baby food and end up giving a lot of them away.


Speaking of green, here's a picture of Matilda and I from a day when we went out and hit the town. Not only is clothes shopping for little girls fun (I found the madras dress she's wearing at a thrift store for $1), but it gives me an excuse (as if I needed one) to dress even more colorfully. On this particular day, I decided to do my best to match her outfit, with some bright green vintage Lacoste pants and a pale pink Lands' End oxford-style polo.

Hopefully we can do the matching outfits many more times before she decides that she's embarrassed by such things.