LEE COUNTY, Miss. (WTVA) -- Except during the winter months, lawn care remains a constant in any homeowner's life.
That being said, it's not exactly the easiest to do when temperatures hit the triple digits.
"It's getting extremely dry," agronomist Charlie Stokes said. "You have to dig down into the soil deep before you get any type of moisture."
Stokes oversees crop conditions for the Mississippi State Extension Service. He said this summer's heat wave has arrived a few months early.
"We're used to having high temperatures in the month of June, but it's usually just a few days of it. This has been a prolonged period here," Stokes said. "This is something we usually see in August. We call it the 'dog days of summer.'"
Homeowner Terry McCully would agree.
"When you mow -- it looks green after I mow, but the tops will be brown [the next day]," McCully said.
That kind of dryness means the most obvious way to keep your lawn healthy is by watering it, which keeps the color green and the plants well-nourished.
And in McCully's neighborhood, that water gets used often.
"I was gonna water [my yard] last night, and of course, we have several people with sprinkler systems," McCully said. "I believe all of them had it turned on last night, and there was no water pressure, so I didn't water at all last night."
Experts say certain pests also thrive on the hot conditions.
"Army worms and chinch bugs both love hot weather, hot, dry weather," McCully said. "The drier it is, the more [likely] they'll be. They basically eat all of the vegetation above the ground."
The tell-tale signs of a bug infestation: patches of missing grass.
But don't worry; homeowners can spray for them if their yard's affected.
And despite the hot weather's disadvantages, McCully says it's not all bad.
"You don't have to mow quite as much," McCully said.
