Heat wave (by Abigail)

Well, today's the day! When we get to 100 degrees today we will have broken the Alabama heat record. Nine consecutive days of 100+ temperatures! We tied the record yesterday with eight days, and we'll probably break today's record tomorrow...

It's pretty hot. And dry. The trees are really starting to suffer, sometimes it looks like Fall outside with all the dead leaves. The dogs are spending a lot of their time in the garage now, but the other animals are having more trouble escaping from the heat. A couple of months ago we had a pretty good rainstorm and I put some buckets outside to collect rainwater for my plants. But the frogs got to it first, so now it's become my tadpole pond.

Just a plastic tub with water and plants, but it's become an oasis to all sorts of interesting creatures.

No, the tadpole's haven't hatched yet. These are tiny little tree frogs that I've seen in my garden before, but they really love the tadpole pond. They're so small that it's really hard to get good pictures of them, it's like trying to photograph the detail in a dime. Plus, they don't stay in place for very long!

This beautiful male dragonfly believes that he owns my whole garden. When I try to get close to him, he sticks his tail in the air to look bigger and glares at me!

This picture didn't turn out very well, but you can see that it's a small lizard on the top leaf and another tree frog down below.

Some of my guests are more dangerous than the others. This is a red wasp, they're big and pretty scary looking, but they carry less poison than the smaller yellow jackets. They're pretty cool to watch, because when they want a drink they can fly down and stand right on top of the water and take a drink.

This is a bloom from one of the water plants I have in the pond. The markings remind me of peacock feathers.

Yesterday, of course, we celebrated Maddenholiday. For those of you who have not heard of this classic holiday, it was invented two whole years ago, as a day to celebrate the release of the new Madden football video game. Maddenites, as die-hard fans of the game are called, have their own website to talk about the game; songs, based on classic Christmas songs, with lyrics about the game; and a blog to discuss new ideas to introduce to the game!

No, we are not Maddenites and do not often play video games, but we did enjoy last year's version of the game and we will use any excuse to have a holiday! We bought the updated version yesterday afternoon and we really enjoy the improved animation. We had been planning on going out to dinner that night, so I made a football cake to eat when we got home.