Autumn Approaches

I love summer. I love the warmth that goes bone deep. I love how the sunshine makes every living plant go into Mach 3 overdrive. I love having to wear sunglasses just to go out to the mailbox. I love seeing the temperature climb to 80, 85, and even into the 90s.

I hate that summer lasts only 3 months.

I fear summer is waning here in the sunny Pacific Northwest. After a month of unseasonably hot weather, there has been a subtle shift in the air. Whereas for the past month it's been so hot that some of my windows have remained permanently open, even when I went to bed, the nights have been getting colder. For the first time in over a month since the hot weater hit, I went around the house closing all the windows tonight. The past few days have been coolish and overcast. This evening I had to put on a sweater because my T-shirt isn't warm enough. I just checked the thermometer on the wall in the hallway and it's 66 degrees. Autumn is nearly here.

But ever the optimist, I shall not begin mourning the passing of summer until I have to turn on my furnace for the first time since June.

The Summer That Wasn't

For the first time in many years I had a large veggie garden this year.  Below is a picture of part of the terraced garden in front of the basement.  I was diligent, starting my seeds indoors and transplanting them early.  They started off promisingly.  In April we were blessed with unseasonably hot weather, and the garden took off.  And then summer came.

At least the calendar said it was summer.  You couldn't tell it by the weather.  We'd have a few hot days, and then the clouds would move in and the skies would turn gray.  So my garden's been growing in fits and starts.  Once, we had almost two weeks of hot weather, but then it turned cold again and everything quit growing.

And so it's been, all summer.  My corn is 5' tall, but has only begun to tassel.  I probably won't get any corn this year.  My tomatoes, on the left side of the picture, are tall and vigorous and loaded with tomatoes--all of them green.  I have 6 large tomato plants, and so far, have harvested less about a dozen ripe tomatoes, most of them cherry tomatoes.  My summer squash is barely producing, and my acorn squash is so late that it hasn't even begun to blossom yet.  My sugar snap peas are a joke.  You can see them lying anemic on the ground in front of the tomatoes My green beans, however, are doing great and I've been eating beans for weeks.  The broccoli is just starting to form heads, and my cabbage and Brussels sprouts are iffy. 

The only thing that grew immediately, and fast, was my radish crop.  I had to pull them up and toss them, as they were all wormy.  I'm never growing radishes again.  My carrots are still infants.  My Walla Walla sweets aren't even adolescents, though the jalapeno pepper plant--the only one I planted because I bought it by mistake at the nursery--is growing like crazy.  When I bought it, I thought it was a green pepper plant.  My other green peppers are sickly.  My cucumbers haven't a single blossom yet.  My parsley, on the other hand, is growing like gangbusters.

All in all, we've had an absolutely lousy growing season for veggie gardens.  I'd bought a canning and freezing book this year, anticipating canning and freezing all my produce.  Guess I'll put the book away.   I certainly won't have anything to preserve this year!