April, May, June I am so gung ho about everything outside. The Garden, the lawn, house maintenance, the Frop bog, the pond. Then by July, just like clockwork I get totally de-motivated. I don’t know if it’s the heat, difficulty breathing due to humidity, allergies to everything green that grows feels awful (full body itching) etc. But today it’s actually really nice and comfortable out, yet I just want to stay in and play some games. Now working on the pond and bog are still a joy, but everything else is blah.
Does anyone else go through this, and how do I kick myself in the ass to overcome this mid-summer slump?
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Also, I’m sorry if these kinds of posts are annoying. They’re actually very helpful in trying to determine if there’s something wrong with my thinking or if it’s not irregular. Being “not normal” it’s hard for me to gauge illness fatigue vs. normal life.
I love them. When I see the thread title in the Suggested Topics box I sometimes try to guess if it’s a jpinard thread, and often I’m right. ;) But if I make fun of you for it then please know it’s meant in jest.
I have some pavers on our porch that need to be put back in place. I will finally be doing something about it after buying what I needed a month ago. So yeah, the work energy in the middle of summer does go down.
I cannot lose what I never have. ;) That’s one good thing about renting. I feel no guilt about doing absolutely nothing outside—especially in summer. (Heat. Yuck.)
Poison here. It’s happened the same way the last two years. I’m super-motivated, get busy, gross, and grubby digging, weeding, landscaping, planting, and watering for weeks. Then, out of the blue, I somehow find that somewhere, somehow, I found poison (I assume ivy, looks like ivy anyway), and every exposed inch from elbow-to-hand and lower-thigh-to-ankle is covered with the disgusting, itchy crap. It is a nightmare that lasts for 2-3 weeks, and completely takes me out of action. When it’s finally gone, so is any/all enthusiasm for the rest of the summer.
I’ve tried Caladryl and Ivarest, but neither seem to help very much. I basically just try to not scratch, power through it, and wear long pants/sleeves if I need to go anywhere public. This year’s infection is nearly gone, so I’m trying to drum up the courage to resume things this weekend. I’ve done more Googling about it this year, and so I’m stocked up on rubbing alcohol for immediate application to all exposed skin after doing anything at all even remotely close to any questionable plant life, followed by a long, thorough, cold (closes the pores to prevent spreading) shower, and the immediate washing of the worn clothes. Hopefully, this will prevent another monstrous attack, but man, what a pain!
So, the traditional way of working in the Summer months, at least in the villages of Portugal, is to wake up at 5 am or 6 am, work until 9 am or 10 am at the most, and then only work again after 5 pm, to avoid the hotter parts of the day.
So, yeah, the heat will certainly change things, and it might take a few days of cooler weather to go back to “normal”.
I’d read an article recently talking about how poison ivy was becoming more problematic with climate change. That and ticks are the reason I rarely look for new frogs in the wild to boost my frog population’s genetic diversity.
It’s 103F where I’m at in Texas as I type this at 5pm. Luckily humidity is lower today than earlier this week. It will remain above 100 until at least 8pm. We’ve been above 100F for weeks now with no forecast for relief.
Now I CAN work outside if I have to. I’ve lived in Texas all my life and I know how and I’m acclimated. But its really not comfortable unless you do it in the early morning as @DarthMasta suggests. .
Similarly I try to work up the motivation to get out an do an hour or so of weeding/brush clearing as close to dawn as I can before it gets too hot. Unfortunately here where it’s close enough to hell to see Sparks, at 5pm it’s still too hot to work. It’s 90 right now!
This year I pick up a 80v electric trimmer and a brush cutter attachment for it so it can chew up the sagebrush that is my nemesis. The battery lasts some 45 minutes, which is about how long it take me to get overheated and for my arm to get tired, so it works out well.
