“The days still come in order. Gray light collects in the bedroom long before dawn. Then comes a bleached noon and nearly always the threat of a late-afternoon thunderstorm. The darkness is notated by fireflies, who have been unusually numerous — or is it unusually bright? — this year. The crickets are now whining away, as if they were reeling in August. I am laying in all the thinking I can against a time when summer is in short supply. “- Verlyn Klinkenborg

Source: Small Farm Report – New York Times

Mid-summer brings a different sort musing. This summer here on the Texas Gulf Coast has been different from those immediately past. When we first moved out here about fifteen years ago, we had a fairly large prolific garden. So prolific we would play out on the vegetable long before the vegetables played out on us. There were a number of years there when I know the kids were ready to die if they saw another summer squash. The cucumbers I would take to work were in the foot long size bracket. Tomatoes, lets not even go there. I am not a big tomato fan so I would never plant that many, one or two plants of two or three varieties and a couple of cherries. I could never keep up with the harvest…And trying to find takers when everyone was picking baskets of tomatoes, not happening.

I would begin to look forward to the heat of July which would wipe out the garden. Then as the days would go by, I would start to plan the fall garden and the cycle would begin again. Then sometime in the last ten years the micro-climate here went screwy and it became hot and dry during the primary spring growing season. The garden would start out looking great but the results just got worse and worse until about five years ago I just gave up.

I miss my gardening days…Maybe I need to start thinking about a fall vegetable garden again. If the winters keep being as warm as the last couple, we may be able to garden three seasons here…Fall, winter, and spring…Talk about a screwy climate.