Heavy rain that delayed planting tomatoes and peppers is now helping those crops survive the heat dome. Rain over several days deeply moistened the ground, and plant root structures have been drawing on that reservoir. Despite the heat, the garden is growing and producing vegetables.

My daily heat dome process is to wake early, read 25 pages, then make coffee and head to my writing space on the lower level. About sunrise, I take a 30-minute walk on the state park trail, head out to the garden and inspect every plot to see what I might see. Next comes harvest, followed by watering as needed. After that, I perform a few outdoors chores before heading inside for the balance of the day. That is all usually finished by 7 a.m. although I return to the garden late afternoon to see how plants are surviving the heat. Looks like the heat dome will break this weekend with highs in the low 80s.

The ability to deal with weather is something Iowans are known for. We shall persevere for as long as we have to and deal with this climate crisis in a sensible manner, assuming that is at all possible.

When ambient temperatures are in the 90s, my indoors work is resting, cooking, cleaning, and writing. This week was mostly about writing. I posted about potential next long projects on Sunday:

The first would be some form of book about gardening, food, and cooking. Not a cookbook per se, but one that takes essays already written and expands them to create a way to live related to food. There are lots of examples of this. My current favorite is Tamar Adler’s An Everlasting Meal. This is somewhere in my immediate future.

I developed this idea the last few days. What began as a way to collect recipes changed into a book about the transformation of food and how we use it over a lifetime to transform ourselves.

Rough cut, this project would have three sections: becoming a different kind of cook (i.e. changing from meat-based meals to vegetarian and vegan), recipes that followed me from my parents’ home and personal beginnings as a cook and how they changed, and landing on cooking as a way of living. Cooking would be closely related to my idea of a kitchen garden.

I’m not ready to commit to a big project yet, but the concertina has begun to play before the carnival begins.

Two or three more days under a heat dome gives me ample space to work on this. I believe this is how creativity begins.