HOW HOT IS It REALLY? 
[As far as a vegetable garden goes,  it's hot enough to water twice a day.]

When I do things as I did yesterday, I soothe my bruised ego by telling myself things such as: “Smart people make as many mistakes as other people; the difference is that smart people learn from their mistakes and correct them.  Smart people have a healthy dose of self-doubt in their systems and often check out the veracity of their own actions. etc.”

Such was the case yesterday. For those who may not know me, I live in Garland Texas and I am the current interim president of a non-profit that I founded in 2013, Loving Garland Green.  We are the stewards of the Garland Community Garden.  This community garden is unlike most.  For starters, we don’t have a bunch of coffin-like raised beds all line up in a straight row.  Our beds are all shapes and sizes and many of our member grow plants in pots of all sizes and shapes.  Our mission is to encourage people to grow some of the food they eat. We donate half of our produce to a local food bank, The Good Samaritans.  Although our mission is not food production for the community, we still average about 600 pounds of produce donated to the Good Samaritans each year--which is another important part of supporting one's community:  Every little bit adds up.  No donation is too small.

Back to yesterday. I decided to put two thermometers down at the garden:  one in the sun on our garden sign, and one in the shade on a tree.   The purpose of this thermometer experiment was so that people could compare the difference in sun and shade and perhaps spark conversations regarding the impact of deforestation on our planet and other conversations regarding climate change and its impact on our lives.

At 5PM yesterday, I took readings from both sites.  The thermometer in the sun read 117 degrees F and the one in the shade read 93 degrees.  I knew something was wrong.  My cell phone told me the temperature was 102 F.  Also, I wasn’t buying a 24 degree difference from being in the full sun and underneath the canopy of a large tree.  So, when I went home I googled ‘proper placement of thermometers’ and found that if you want an accurate reading, don’t put them in the sun.

I may remove the thermometer I placed in the sun to a more protected area of the garden, or I may leave it where it is with a label beneath it that reads: “feels like temperature”.  That way I can still be “right” and my ego will be saved.

Which brings up another question:  How the heck do these weather-people arrive at their “feels like” temperatures?  Do they have some scientific formula, or is it just more baloney from corporate media?

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Be sure and visit the Garland Community Garden this Saturday (August 20)

You can get some free canna rhizomes to plant now (hummingbirds love them), see a pot of edible weeds, learn all about growing hemp in Texas, and get a list of all the seeds you can still plant in a North Texas fall garden.