Living Without Air

Summer is here,.... definitely here. The time of the year when the humidity is so high that the haze just hangs in the air and you feel more like you are swimming than walking when you are outside.  I wake up in the morning and hustle outside in the pre-dawn to do chores before it heats up, sometimes dressed in only whatever pajamas I slept in the night before, and on these hot summer nights... it is a good thing that I live in the country without too many neighbors driving by.  We dress to fit the weather around here because living in a turn of the century farm house means...you guessed it, no air conditioning.   I know, I know....at this point you are all thinking, "Oh my God, how does anyone live without air conditioning?!"   Well, up until about 30 years ago, everyone lived without air conditioning.  It was a luxury - saved for large hotels and businesses - and now it is considered the "norm".  Unfortunately, the way we spend our cash on fossil fuels and energy, it will likely, once again, be considered a luxury before too long. 

As hot and sticky as it can sometimes get, I have never really longed for an air conditioner.  It was nice when I was pregnant in July with my third child and we were living in town, but I did just fine without it on the subsequent two pregnancies.  I, personally, can't stand the sound of motors and compressors running all night - even the fan is a bit too much noise at times - birds, coyotes, dogs barking, thunder, wind,....fine, just nothing mechanical.

And so, we live in the heat and this, in a nut shell, is how we survive.  We open the windows and catch the breeze. 


Dark, shady and cool - the perfect siesta

Timing is everything, however.  You have to open the windows at night - all the windows - on every side of the house, and if there isn't a breeze, you create one with fans until the cool night air seeps in and displaces the warm air of the day.  Then, (and this is key), in the morning first thing, you close the windows and the drapes.  It sounds a little counter intuitive, but after many summers of living quite nicely through days of high heat and humidity, I can tell you this works. 
We have also done what we can to be sure that we have plenty of shade trees surrounding our house.  Deciduous trees planted on the south side so that their leaves shade in the summer and allow sun in during the winter, and when the heat just gets too stifling, then it is time to pull out the hose and have a little water fight action to cool things down.

And as it so happens, just about the time that you are convinced you will not be able to take the heat and humidity for one more day, the horizon darkens and the haze takes on a new appearance of omminous clouds in the west.  You can feel the storm clouds building and rolling in until, finally, from the completely still, fetid air comes a blast of cool wind that brings with it a thunderstorm, the smell of ozone and a cool breeze.  That cool breeze I appreciate more than any air conditioner I have ever known.

Welcome To The Jungle - Random Thoughts While Weeding.

I find myself having to stop, midway through weeding the gardens for the thousandth time, and remind myself that this is the time of year that I dream about in January - hot, humid, and green.  And yet, when I am in the midst of it I am too hot and it is too humid and way too green!  The corn is about 4 feet over my head, the beans are stringing all over the place, the peas are getting totally lost amid all the weeds, my flower gardens are horribly neglected and the sweet potato vine has taken on the personality of Audry II in Little Shop of Horrors.   The list of vegetables and flowers to try to save from the assault of the weeds gets forever longer and my back and shoulders become ever more sun burnt from being stooped over pulling weeds all day.  Thankfully, there are a few plots of vegetables - namely potatoes and squash that were mulched well with straw and newspaper that don't require much work other than to pull out the occasional errant weed, but the other seemingly endless beds of plants needing my attention are enough to make anyone wish for a sudden, yet definitive frost.

I often channel my grandmother when this sense of being completely overwhelmed strikes.  Her motto for cleaning her house - which was a large four square and a lot of space for an elderly lady to tackle - was to "clean one corner per day"  At the time she told me this I was probably about 15 and thought 'that's crazy - it would take weeks to get the house clean' not realizing at the time the wisdom of my grandma.  The hardest part is always starting.  A task too big will put just about anyone into procrastination mode, but to set the goal of cleaning just one corner....that is do-able and so you begin the task and before you realize it, the entire house is cleaned because you naturally progress from one corner to the next and so on.  I apply the same thought process to my gardens although it is modified slightly to  "save just one plant from the weeds". 

This particular mindset came about when I was about 8 months pregnant with kid number 4 and I couldn't bend over anymore to get at the weeds - those were long, hot days indeed - but plant by plant I continued to weed.  Some days I literally did save just one plant at a time before having to go inside and take a break, but these days I start with one plant and slowly drift from plant to plant to plant until I look around at the carnage of weeds around me. I was so proud of weeding my entire tomato patch the other day that I just sat on the dirt as though it were the nicest sand of the beach and basked for a few minutes - actually looking up at the sun and letting the front half of my body have some exposure to the light for once.

I think of my grandparents often when working in the garden.  Things my grandma used to say, poems she taught me, the lives they all lived.  One of the things that I most enjoy is knowing the favorite flowers of my grandparents  - for my Grandpa George it was Marigolds, for Grandma Syl it was Petunias and for Grandpa Dave it was Four o'clocks.  Grandma Vera had so many favorite flowers and grasses that I don't think she could ever pick just one.  I grow all these flowers in my garden and have found that most of them will self seed year after year, which gives the feeling that my grandparents are with me all the time.  That connection, however abstract it may be, is very comforting and I will find myself mentally talking with my grandparents periodically as I go about saving one plant or another from hostile takeover by weeds - I imagine what they would say about current events, the kids, my old house.  All of my grandparents were farmers in South Dakota and lived through the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression.  Imagining what those times were like - how difficult, how frightening - makes my own stress about current events slightly more bearable.

 Weed, weed, weed......drifting about the gardens thinking all the while.....it is incredibly hot right now and I know there are many that consider me crazy, but we don't have air conditioning and I like it that way.  Again, I think of my grandparents that lived (and enjoyed) their lives without the benefit of air conditioning. The trick is to cool the house off at night by opening all the windows and then closing them during the day to contain the cooler air.  It works well, no expensive air conditioning needed.  We have become a society of wimps - addicted to our televisions, iPhone and air conditioning.  There is a way to becoming energy independent....it's called 'not using it'.  Given the current state of society, it will never happen. 

Weed, weed, weed.....sorting through flowers and weeds and came across the season's first Preying Mantis.  Very small - only about the length of my little finger and very quick.  She doesn't realize yet that she is the top of the insect food chain.  I won't even dare to hurt her because she is too valuable for eating unwanted bugs.  I will perhaps move her to a more desired hunting location, but I wouldn't think of harming her.

The worst part to all this weeding is collecting and disposing of the weeds afterward.  Inevitably, while raking up all the weeds I will spot a few thousand more and it will take me another half hour before they are all raked up and thrown into the compost bin where they will be quickly broken down into something far more useful than the weeds they were.  The jungle still lives on, but at least one corner of it is now more under control.