Dog Days of Summer in Southern Louisiana

I have always thought that the hottest and coldest days of the year follow the longest and shortest days by about one month. That would mean that this week would be the hottest...and it hasn't disappointed...it was hot and miserable. The last couple of days, I have been with the group where I work that visually evaluates commercial sugarcane variety candidates this time of year, grading, taking stalk counts, looking for disease and insect damage, and noting other characteristics. We usually join up with our peers from the Louisiana State University AgCenter at the later stages of testing, because our varieties are put in the same tests and evaluated together.

Frankly, I have a difficult time staying outdoors for very long this time of year. I will lose more than a gallon of water in the time it takes for me to mow our lawn (less than 1 hr). I can walk outdoors in the early morning when the humidity is 100% and do absolutely nothing. In 15-20 minutes, I'm soaking wet. I thought I knew what humidity was, having lived in Hawaii, but after moving here, I got re-educated. You can track our weather at our farm here at the Houma location.

Our spring-summer garden has finished producing, so I tilled it up this past weekend. It was a better than average year. We had 18 tomato plants and each produced about a 5-gallon bucket of tomatoes much of which Judy preserved as V-8 style tomato juice. Other successes from the garden were bush beans, cantaloupes, corn, cow peas, cucumbers, onions, peppers, and watermelons. Outside the garden area, we had a terrific harvest of blackberries and grapes. Judy preserved the grapes as bottled grape juice. Failures and near failures included broccoli, peas, and potatoes, all of which were simply planted the wrong time of year for southern Louisiana.

In the evening, it gets a little more comfortable. A good time to kick back and enjoy some Louisiana music such as found at the LouisianaTravel website. Click on "Listen" then "Listen now" and find your favorite flavor of local music.