Ruttsville

It's still hot here in rural Kansas.  The corn isn't quite as high as an elephant's eye, and we can all tip our hats off to the drought for that.  We had a hay man come and cut the grass in our pasture.  He noticed that we no longer have hayburning equines out there, and he stopped me one day on one of my lengthy walks (7.5 miles) down the road.  Sad state of drought affairs, most of what is out in the pasture to bale as hay is only weeds.  And he only managed to eek out 2.5 round bales off the lot.  That's not much weedy hay for all the labor put into making hay while the 100º sun shines.

That Spouse o' Mine just poked his head into the study: bike helmet, sunglasses, and face glowing from freshly-applied sunscreen.  He's off on a group ride, approximately 25 miles.  I exclaimed as I have done every Tuesday this whole summer, I think, "Oh!  It's Tuesday!  I forgot."

I am living in Ruttsville.

It's too hot to do anything (unless you consider having a wedding in the mountains), and my waking hours and daylight hours, and then hot evening hours are all running together like Edvard Munch's The Scream:  

Here are two things - nay, three things which seem to be thriving in Corny-Kansas-in-August:

Datura (Angels' Trumpets)


Tomatoes.  Last week's haul: ~ 100.  That's the work of a Darwinian Garden in a drought:

 And wind.  Windy, wind-wind-wind.  At least we can harness it for our benefit.  

 And there you have it.  A tired soul, fatigued from wind and heat and dust and heat and heat and...

Oh.  I am repeating myself.

Ruttsville.

Gotta climb out, somehow...