OilMan's Commute

When one is retired, one's commute can be from the garden to the puzzle table . When it's too hot to be in the garden, or to even think of the, variously counted, 28, 30 or 36 garden steps, one's commute is even shorter. It didn't become too hot today until about noon, but now it is 97ºF and neither of us is considering leaving the air conditioned house.

We have discovered the remnants of a leak where the porch roof is fastened to the roof of the house. This is both good news and bad news. The good news is that I have always insisted that the opaque plexiglass roof of the porch holds in the heat and prevents air circulation out there, making it even hotter than it is in the sun. OilMan, the man who says he thinks in numbers, says to me "the thermometer says it isn't any hotter". I say to OilMan, "Just walk outside. You can FEEL the difference." It tends to go downhill from there, so I was pleased when our good friend Dan agreed with me and said the porch roof would probably have to come off anyway so the roofer could determine the extent of the damage.m to the house roof.

The bad news is that replacing it with something else is going to be both difficult and expensive. We moved here in large part so that we could get away from the dismal fog that plagues the Bay Area in the summer and prevented us from eating outside. Now we can't eat outside because it's too hot, so I think it is worth it to invest in shade solutions. So far we've planted a tree and erected seven umbrellas (six of them for the vegetable beds!) We'll see what happens next, especially from the brain of the man who thinks in numbers! 

I,  for one, spent hours on the computer today researching "shade structures" and am none the wiser, but I'm the one who would be happier with no porch roof.