Today is August 20th and I am freezing. If it is supposed to be summer then the dog is a St. Bernard and I want him to show up with his cask of Brandy to help warm me up and cheer me up.
As is typical of the UP the weather is insane. It has been a VERY strange spring and summer and I'm quite tired of it. Good thing I have my winter wardrobe up here because I have gotten a lot of use out of my jeans and sweat shirts. Don't tell me it is because of climate change because the climate up here has apparently ALWAYS been like this. Boiling one day, freezing the next. All that this has done for me is that I just want to stay in bed with a good book and nap.
We started out our "summer" in Michigan with days and days of pouring rain. May here was mud month. It was too cold and wet to even think about a garden. I was anxious to get my tomato and pepper plants started but the weather just wasn't cooperating. I finally decided it was now or never so I got 2 tomato plants and 2 pepper plants at Home Depot. Last year I bought my veggie plants at Home Depot and they went bananas ! I had more peppers and tomatoes than I could ever use. I shared as many as possible with neighbors but we were still over run. Even with the bunny nibbling on them I still had way more than I needed or wanted. So this year I had high hopes of another bumper crop. NOT !!!! I planted my veggies in pots of new potting soil outside in the sun. I put some plant food in the soil and sat back to wait for my vast harvest. The tomato plants grew but only had a few tomatoes on them. The pepper plants never increased in size more than an inch or two and only produced ONE pepper on one plant and whopping TWO peppers on the second plant. The peppers are just hanging there, not getting bigger or turning yellow like they were supposed to. My " garden" was a total flop ! With the exception of the tomato plants that are growing out of the foundation. Last years bountiful crop reseeded itself along the foundation of the house and those plants are producing more tomatoes than the ones that I have nurtured all summer.
So much for gardening this summer. I think we had too much rain, not enough sun and it was too cold at night for the plants to flourish. Even June and July were grey, chilly and windy. Every so often God would give us a wonderful sunny day just to give us hope. I have worn more flannel and sweats this summer than I did for the entire winter in Florida for the past 10 years.
And then it was August and my son and his 3 kids flew up to MI from their home in south Florida. It was such a brutally hot summer in Florida I thought they would really enjoy some cool weather. Funny joke ! The 3 days that they were here at the farm the temperatures were in the high 80's and it was sunny and humid. Me and my plants were burning to death. It was so uncomfortably hot that we had all the air conditioners in the house cranking full speed. Then on the day my family left the temperatures dropped and the clouds rolled in again. Since then we have had days of clouds that tease us with a peek at the sun every so often. The sun pops out and I think, "Hooray ! I'm going outside!" Then just as I walk out the door the clouds gather and I find myself in a rain shower. Just enough to make me wet and cold but not enough to water my plants.
All of this crazy weather has only added to my desire to crawl into bed and read and sleep. I have ZERO ambition to do anything. Because I am feeling so washed out I have read about ten books so far this summer. I have my favorite spots to read and I have given equal time to each of them. My one favorite reading spot is outside under the huge Maple tree. Sad to say that I have only sat there about 3 times this summer. It is either too cold, too hot or too wet to want to sit out there. Also all the rain has increased the mosquito population so even when I get a few hours of sunshine the mosquitoes are too much to want to put up with.
The dog days of summer this year are pretty mangy. Think of the old, scruffy mutt that is lying in the gutter of a city slum. That's what this summer looks like. I'm ready for summer to be over.
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