In the United States, the dog days of summer traditionally last from July 3 to August 11.  These are supposed to be the hottest and driest days of the year "when the seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad, and all creatures became languid."

This year, the dog days entered with a sniffle.  Cloudy skies all week have meant blissfully cool weather, but I did hear the first dog day cicadas begin their summer chorus.  As Mark mentioned, we started to irrigate Friday, and yesterday I had to lower our pump slightly in the well since the groundwater had dropped.

The ancient Greeks sacrificed a brown dog at the beginning of the dog days to plead for cooler weather, but there's no need to worry --- Lucy is safe with us.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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