Friday June 30th
While my weather app is saying it’s 80° out, my back porch indoor/outdoor thermometer is telling me it’s 78° and so is my cell phone. Whatever the temperature, it’s warm.. but.. not as warm and not as oppressively hot feeling as last week. And, if you believe the forecast, it’s a trend that will continue in two next week. Let’s hope the prognosticators are correct in their foretelling.
Today marks our 18th straight day of heat advisories or heat warnings. We close June on the same note we’ve been singing (with rampant falsetto) since mid-month. Heat waves are often judged by how many temperature records are broken. So have there been many temperature records broken the last couple weeks? The answer is not really.
For the month of June, through yesterday, we set or tied a total of zero record highs at Bush, two at Hobby, none at Galveston, and none in College Station. Despite the general lack of record highs, we’ve managed to reach a frequency and consistency of 110+ heat index values that is rare for this region. It’s why we emphasized that this would be an abnormal heat wave for us.
And as if I really needed another reason for my long.. long.. long love of coffee… This little tidbit from the Blue Zones would be enough to force me to have another cup…
Of course, the visual ain’t half bad either…
TGIF. It’s the Friday leading up to a very long weekend. My wife is managed score Monday off before the 4th of July. Though according to the prognosticators, there’s a good chance of rain showers on the 4th. I won’t complain after the last couple of weeks because the grass could really use a little rain right now.
I guess you could call me old fashioned.. lazy.. some kind of environmentalist.. but I don’t fertilize or water my yard. It’s not even a homogeneous lawn grass. It’s really more of a mixture of St Augustine and pasture grasses. It drives my wife a little bit crazy because I only have it mown once every two weeks. And by the end of that time span for dallisgrass(1) is sending up masses of seed heads. It’s the side of those seed heads that really gets her in a tizzy. Me.. I just like the variety… It’s why I moved to a more rural setting all those years ago to get away from my one and only experience with a HOA.
It’s almost funny.. it seems the HOA has followed me to the country. Our new neighbors, the subdivision of Watermark has now had their official opening announcement with info on their houses. It’s been all over the “Talk of Alvin” Facebook page.
Everyone seems shocked by the size of the lots, the cost of the houses, the speed with which they are being built. Some of the comments are amazing.
Counting Down To 70 Years – 221 Days
(1)Paspalum dilatatum is a species of grass known by the common name dallisgrass, Dallas grass, or sticky heads. It is native to Brazil and Argentina, but it is known throughout the world as an introduced species and at times a common weed. Its rapid growth and spreading rhizomes make it an invasive pest in some areas. It is present in the southern half of North America, southern Europe, much of Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and many tropical and subtropical areas.
Paspalum dilatatum is a food source for several avian species, including the long-tailed widowbird.
The common name dallisgrass was derived from A. T. Dallis, a 19th-century farmer who grew the species extensively near La Grange, Georgia.
