It's Very Hot And Humid Here in NJ

The heat index here today was 115 degrees. It was so humid that my eyeballs were fogging up when I went outside from the air conditioning into the soup. The black flies have been torture on the horses and I am spraying them with fly spray 3 or 4 times a day. I use OFF on their legs which is the only thing that seems to give them any relief for more than a few minutes. Jerry set up six fans out there, so they are getting hot air blown on them from all angles. We also have a large cooler of cantaloupe and watermelon, seconds from the local farmer, that they get four or five times a day along with a bath or two to cool them down.  The extreme heat is especially tough on my old guy, Rembrandt. 

Photo taken here at the Sandarosa.

Even though we've had very few rain storms, they say we're not having a drought here. This is due to some severe thunderstorms we have been having about every ten days or so. The last two dumped a lot of rain in a very short amount of time. I am very thankful for them, even though we had to get a new TV cable box and go out and buy all new phones for the house, workshop and the barn. They all got fried from a close lightning strike. I was on the back porch watching the hummingbirds going crazy when it hit the transformer 300 feet up the road from us. I felt the charge go through my arm and let out a scream. We were only without electricity for five hours, Thank God! Now if I hear even distant rumbling, I unplug everything of value from the wall. The weather is so strange these days. There was no real warning of the last hit. I would be happy to see it happen again, the rain that is, without the lightning strike. I hope some of the other folks across the country that are suffering with record breaking heat and drought, will get relief real soon too.

Here's one of our young "yard dogs" after the last downpour. During the storms, the hummers just have a ball, getting blown around while they bathe and play tag, all the while cheeping  and flying around wildly. It's very entertaining to say the least. Notice this youngster's single red feather on his gorget.


See more hummingbirds this week on my SketchingEveryday blog.