Today is so hot, and humid. My Mom is happy as a clam, she loves the heat. Me, I am safe at home, in the air conditioned luxury of Mist Cottage. Attila, well… Attila is outside, working on the exterior south wall of the house, and the exterior south wall of the garage, scraping paint, and repainting. He has finished scraping and painting the wall the house, and had just finished scraping the wall of the garage. I offered to help, but Attila pointed out that having to take me to the hospital for heat exhaustion would not really be of much help to him. He has a point. I do not tolerate the heat well.
This afternoon it will feel like 39C with the humidex. Tonight the temperature will fall to 17C. It is a real roller coaster ride!
This morning I attended a three hour workshop on storing family photos and documents. It was excellent, and the cost was entirely reasonable at $8. I have not really done anything like this since I stopped going to Yoga class, which is more than two years ago. When a description of this workshop popped up in my email box, I called immediately to reserve a seat. This morning I was resistant, I had to make myself get dressed and get out the door on time. It was well worth overcoming inertia.
I haven’t been eating a lot lately, the dental work is still giving me a bit of grief, which is normal. When Attila got home from work yesterday, he asked me what I wanted for dinner. I responded by asking him what HE wanted for dinner. His response was immediate, pizza! We haven’t had pizza since last spring, it is not summer food, requiring the oven to bake. We decided that since it was the first day autumn, an oven meal would be appropriate, even though the temperature outside was hot enough to fry eggs on the back porch railing. So we celebrated the Autumn Equinox by making a homemade pizza, and sitting down to eat it in front of Netflix, watching an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. We know it is autumn, the trees know it is autumn, only the weather doesn’t know it is autumn.
The pizza was better than ever. The pre-made pizza sauce from the grocery store is shockingly high in sodium, which is unacceptable for me. On last night’s pizza, we used a jar of the Tomato Red Pepper Sauce, made earlier in September, in place of the pre-made pizza sauce. The homemade sauce is very low in sodium, so that my part of the pizza got more than the two tablespoons of sauce usually allowed. It was wonderful! And to think, we have another 34 jars of Tomato Red Pepper Sauce… 34 pizzas!
It seems to be my year for run ins with insects. In this heat the yellow jackets are everywhere, huge ones! I went out to see how Attila was doing with his project, and a yellow jacket must have come back into the house with me on my clothing. Then it must have ended up on the floor, where my bare foot came into contact with it, and it stung the bottom of my toe. I felt it. My toe has a “blister” and is quite sore still. I killed the yellow jacket. There are a lot of wasps around our house, the nests seem to be right under the shingles. Attila sprayed and destroyed a nest one evening last week, that was under the awning outside the dining area windows. There was also a huge cone shaped hornets next in our flowering tree in the front yard this summer, which was sprayed in August, and is now inactive. We had another nest of hornets under the compost, the black plastic bin. Attila was planning on spraying it before digging it out, but an animal, probably a skunk, got to it first, dug out the nest and ate all the wasps. Yay!
Worldly Distractions
Weather
HEAT WARNING IN EFFECT
23°C
Date: 2:00 PM EDT Saturday 23 September 2017
Condition: Mainly Sunny
Pressure: 101.9 kPa
Tendency: Falling
Temperature: 23.4°C
Dew point: 20.2°C
Humidity: 82%
Wind: S 22 km/h
Humidex: 31
Visibility: 24 km
Today Mainly sunny. High 31. Humidex 39. UV index 6 or high.
Tonight Clear. Fog patches developing overnight. Low 17.
Quote
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
George Orwell
1903 – 1950
Apparently wasps are rampant in SW Ontario but not a problem around Ottawa? That’s what DH has been told while speaking with co-workers in various areas. We had to buy wasp spray this week as we had a nest under a bubble in our shingles. So, DH sprayed the nest and the next day cleared it out and straightened out the shingle.
We’re at the cottage again this weekend and it’s several degrees cooler here than it is at home. Good thing too, as DH has been cleaning out the roof eaves troughs. They needed it desperately. The eaves at the back of the cottage actually had 3 foot maple trees growing from it!
Hope your toe is feeling better!
Wow, Maggie, with your allergies, you are lucky that bug bite didn’t end you up in hospital! It’s lovely and cool here now, finally. Fall has come. Windows can be opened. At last. I like the idea of boiling the wash cloths. How often do you do this? Wouldn’t just washing them in with the laundry suffice? Or do you do it every day?
Teri, that is where we suspect our yellow jackets are nesting this season, under the shingles, which is probably why the woodpecker was so interested in getting into the soffit. Wasp spray is such a wonderful item to have around!
It is a hot one today, even a few degrees cooler is HOT! I hope you are comfortable. Evestroughs do need to be cleaned on occasion, the birds clean ours out regularly, looking for seeds, lol. Three foot trees, the birds didn’t get to those seeds on time, lol.
My toe is much better today, luckily I am not allergic to bee stings, so by morning the swelling had gone down and the pain subsided.
Bex, luckily I am not allergic to bee stings, or wasps, but Attila is, so it makes working around the house a bit tricky for him just now.
We are in the middle of a serious heat wave, it is so hot that it catches your breath if you walk out of an air conditioned space. Attila went out to the garden to pick 19 heads of garlic, and came back in soaked with sweat. I am staying put in the house. But we think it is autumn, so we are baking pizza, and I am crocheting a warm blanket.
I have never boiled dishclothes before, just read about it from a link Kate put on her blog, so I tried it. The results were great, after boiling I laundered the cloths and they are as fresh as a daisy now. Apparently the bacteria builds up and not even bleach kills them off, I guess you can’t get the acid strong enough to kill them all without damaging the fibres. The water I boiled them in was brown when I was done. I am going to try doing it once a year, and see if that will suffice. The rest of the year I will just wash them in with the laundry.
In my tale of the wasps I forgot to say that we went to 4 stores before finding any wasp spray. All the other stores were sold out!
We had comfortable temps at the cottage. We did put on the interior air conditioner in the bedroom just in case but it never went past fan.
I hear that late next week we’re supposed to go back to Fall temps. I can’t make up my mind if I’m glad for that or not, we had such a cool summer here.
Teri, we had to go to two stores to find the wasp spray, they are a terror this year!
It cools down at night here, but the daytime air feels like a sauna out of control. I look forward to more seasonal temperatures, this heat means I am stuck in the house all day, waiting for nightfall when things cool down. I like cool summers.
This past week we had some great Spring days – windows open, no heating on – then aspring changed her mind again. Not quite winter temps but certainly not warm enough for my liking
I’m a fan of ‘boiling’ things. Takes me back to days of boiling baby nappies (diapers). My dish cloths, tea towels and flannels all go into a big pot and get a deep clean every now and again. And like you said – you should see the colour of the water! Quite embarrassing lol
Here’s hoping it cools off a bit for you – pity the poor farmers and grape growers ~ Cathy
We are on opposite sides of the globe Cathy! I hope your weather warms soon, but not too much.
The boiling of fabrics never occurred to me before. It is interesting that now that I think about it, I’d read about laundresses and boiling cauldrons in historic Europe many times, it didn’t register with me the reasons. It works so well that I am considering trying it with Attila’s work t-shirts, that see heavy use, and are exposed to a lot of industrial oils.
The heat wave is predicted to continue until Wednesday, and then the daily high temperature will drop by increments until the weekend with a high of 15C on Saturday. Today is supposed to be a high of 31C, with a Humidex of 40C, and tomorrow not much better with a high of 30C, and a Humidex of 39C. Because most of the grape farmers here in Ontario are growing grapes for wine, and growing varieties that originated in warmer climates, I am not sure just how this late heat wave will affect them. It has certainly slowed down the growth in our garden, which surprised us. I think the grain and legume crops might be OK with this, as despite the humidity, the crops are dry for harvesting. I wouldn’t want to be out there working in the fields though!