When it's 150º outside...

Could it be any hotter?!

I'm sitting here sipping Fresca and Campari and fretting,

"Is every summer from here on out

 going to be a record breaker?"

Sheesh...

The 4th of July weekend found Tom and me back in northwest Georgia

where we were quick to hightail it to the old coal mine spoil piles.

We were better prepared this time with shovels and hammers, boxes and bubble wrap, but we forgot

INSECT REPELLANT.

Forgetting insect repellant in the south in the summer

 is tantamount to heading into the desert without water.

One of the friends that went with us immediately declared,

"This is not my idea of fun,"

and Tom and I were left to our own devices.

We stuck it out for a couple of hours,

and found some more nice plant fossils, 

but to be honest, my heart wasn't in it.  

I had just returned from my big trip out west and I was beat.

I've come up with a handy formula for how long it takes one to recover after digging fossils all day:  for every day digging fossils, you must add a full day of recovery

 equal to every year of your age over 50, 

hence, at the age of 52, I figure I've got almost 2 months of sleeping late and attending PT sessions before I'll be back to square one.

This was my best Pennsylvanian period fern that I found but sadly, I rinsed the rock GENTLY and all the contrasting color came off.

Dang!

It's still a great imprint but I have to hold it at just the right angle to see it.

I did score a big chunk of lepidodendron bark:

FINALLY, someone on The Fossil Forum pointed out that I was using an old New Zealand coin for scale.  He was, of course, from New Zealand.

The Maori totemic art is almost as cool as the fossil.

And here is the frightening effect of high heat and humidity

on naturally frizzy hair:

I was not, as one might imagine, happy to see this photo.

Ah well, I suppose I need to put in a little more effort if I'm going to maintain a glamorous look when in the field.

We ended our digging early as we were having a lot of storms rolling through.

I took this photo from the deck of our Air BnB:

Worrisome at times.

Before we abandoned the hillside, we came across a turkey nest,

and a hydrangea shrub gone wild.

My smile isn't only for the flowers.

It's also because we were headed back to AC, showers, and adult beverages.

Tom helped me out with a little PT of his own:

Seriously, if your back hurts, 

gentle traction feels good!

I'm trying to get right before the Peace River season starts back up.

Here's a little more info regarding lepidodendrons from the Britannica.com website.

Lepidodendron, extinct genus of tree-sized lycopsid plants that lived during the Carboniferous Period (about 359 million to 299 million years ago). Lepidodendron and its relatives—Lepidophloios, Bothrodendron, and Paralycopodites—were related to modern club mosses. They grew up to 40 metres (130 feet) in height and 2 metres (about 7 feet) in diameter. During their juvenile stages, these plants grew as unbranched trunks with a shock of long, thin leaves that sprouted near the growing tip. They branched at later stages, either in even dichotomies at the growing tip or in lateral branches that were later shed. After branching, the leaves became shorter and awl-shaped. As the plant grew, it shed leaves from older parts of the stemthat left diamond-shaped leaf bases. Stems were characterized by a slender central strand of wood and a thick bark. Since Stigmaria—the underground parts of the plant—resembled stems, they are not considered true roots. The shape of leaf bases and the arrangement of their vascular strands distinguish the different genera within the group of arborescent lycopsids.

Lepidodendron and its relatives reproduced by spores, with megaspores giving rise to the female (egg-producing) gametophyte and microspores giving rise to the male (sperm-producing) gametophyte. Lepidophloios wrapped its megasporangium in a layer of tissue much like that of the seed plants. This feature, however, was independently derived in the lycopsid lineage. In some genera, spore-bearing cones were produced at the tips of branches, suggesting that the plants could reproduce only once in their lifetime. Lepidodendron and its relatives lived in the extensive peat-forming swamps of the Early and Middle Pennsylvanian epochs (about 318 million to 307 million years ago) and became extinct when these swamps disappeared.