The Honest Courtesan

For most of the year, the weather at Sunset is mild and wet. But in the Dog Days, it’s often quite hot and there isn’t much rain to relieve it.  On Saturday we hit 34^o, and on Sunday it got up to 37^o and didn’t even start cooling off until about an hour or so before sunset.  As a result, I was pretty much the only warm-blooded creature moving around for most of the day; the residents of the paddock took shelter in the shade provided by the not-yet-complete stable (Cicero is not visible in this picture because he’s on the other side of that wall, lying under a big tree).  And even though I was working, I tried to stick to less-strenuous tasks (and those in the shade), because I can’t handle the heat as well as I used to (and Grace can’t handle it any more at all).  Still, the heat here was neither as severe nor as long-lasting as in a lot of other places this summer, and the forecast for the next two weeks looks like a lot more typical August weather for us (highs in the mid-20s every day).  And it’s a lot easier to endure the heat when I know relief is on the way.