Reflecting on summer at the halfway mark

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These are zinnias from another year. This year’s crop isn’t as happy.

We are halfway through summer. It is different from other summers. Big time. Some good. Some bad. Some just different.

Weather – Just. Plain. Crazy. We had a lot of rain and after a slow start, a lot of heat. Humidity off the charts! I may be growing mushrooms between my toes or behind my ears if I’m not careful.

Beauty – It’s a wash and wear summer. Makeup slides off like a kid at a water park sometimes ending with a splash! It’s a bad summer for hair. The weather has been clammy. Hair sticks to your skin or frizzles (shazizzles!). My hair feels dirty or greasy or flat within hours of washing.

Summer clothes – I’m either too hot or too cold (from the clamminess). I’ve been wearing my lightweight hoodie a lot. That thing flops on and off as my personal gauge waxes and wanes. Last night I wore long pants. Last week it was linen shorts. I have a clothing range that’s good for both Siberian and tropical rain forest weather.

Air conditioning – Many places locally, especially stores and restaurants, have it cranked down low which only makes the difference greater when you go outside. I routinely carry a sweater with me even when it’s 90 degrees. Definitely not a designer look! More like vintage nursing home.

Foliage – With all the rain many of my trees have eighteen inches of new growth this year. That’s a record. Some flowers have done really well. I’ve had to cut back my water lily pads because they were taking over the yard. (Seriously they were edging out of the pond over the stone wall!) My geraniums looked hot and tired (like I sometimes do) and stopped flowering. Hydrangeas – wonderful! Roses – so-so. Weeds – outrageous and tenacious!

Tomatoes – This is a tough one. There aren’t as many as usual but they are ripening and wonderful. It’s been warm enough and wet enough. Perhaps too warm? Or the soil is tired? Or the wet is too wet?

Farm stands – Corn is fabulous and the stone fruit (peaches, plums, apricots) has been sweet. The local strawberries were not. Some vegetables have taken off. A zucchini can grow two feet overnight or wither up and die.

Fairs, carnivals, festivals – Yikes! So many have been rained out, postponed or cancelled. The beloved husband was rained out of two baseball games (out of three). We have a large local festival starting next week. We’ll see what Mother Nature brings along with corn dogs, waffle ice cream sandwiches and strudels.

Weather all over has been…well…different. I’m not complaining. Each year brings its challenges and its rewards.

What’s the best or worst of your season?

48 thoughts on “Reflecting on summer at the halfway mark”

  1. Here it is the end of August, and I’m just getting around to your update at the end of July. Sheesh.

    It certainly has been one of *those* summers. Everyone around here is crying foul because there’s a feeling of having been robbed. Temperatures now feel more like the end of September than the end of August. I’m bracing myself now for a winter from hell … aka lots of snow 😦

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  2. I think I may have gotten frostbite in Trader Joe’s yesterday or maybe it was from my office, I’m not sure. All I know is I look forward to getting into my sweltering car when leaving both of these places.
    The weather is ridiculous and I’m tired of feeling like I live in a rain forest.

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    • Rain forest is perfect. I took a hooded sweatshirt to shop at our local upscale grocery store. It’s always cold in there. It was very warm outside and I felt foolish. Inside I noticed others had a sweater or some sort of cover up on.

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  5. You’re right, it has been a crazy season around here. Very few really nice days.
    I was in Baltimore overnight last week where is was 90 with high humidity. Drove home, got out of my car and it was 68 and beautiful. Low 60’s at night followed by high 80’s the next day and humid. Weather people never seem to get the rain predictions right. I’ve given up listening. They’ve joined the list of newscasters.

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    • That’s what bothers me most. We haven’t had a run of really nice days like we usually do. We normally get 3 weeks or so of really stinking hot weather with humidity but this summer it seems to be all the time. I hope we have a long nice fall to make up for it.

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  6. I enjoy the humor in your writing – thank you for helping me smile this Friday morning. Mushrooms between your toes, cold stores that look like vintage nursing homes with the sweater needed despite 90 degrees outside. Oh yes, sounds like here. The best thing about this summer to me is ….SUMMER. Whether too rainy or too hot or too chilly at times or too humid. I. Love. Summer. (Perhaps because I hate the cold!!). This summer, we notice the flowers/trees/bushes are growing faster than ever, our hydrangea bush is finally flowering like crazy, more chipmunks than ever, and the birds are eating us out of house and home, with us refilling the bird feeder and suet holder once a day. Love it all. xoxo

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    • I love summer too. That’s why I get frustrated when we don’t get a series of nice days. Most of this summer has been humid and cloudy. Still better than the heart of winter. I recently bought 200 pounds of birdseed. It’s cheaper and they are also eating like crazy here.

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  7. I feel like I can tell how much rain an area has had by their strawberries — to much rain and they have less taste. Like it’s diluted.

    But I’d kill for some rain out here in California now. Screw the strawberries.

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  8. We just got back from a trip to MD, NJ, and Williamsburg ~ Williamsburg was hot and humid on Monday night, but Tuesday morning was delightful . . . with temps in the low 80’s and 40% humidity. A well appreciated change!

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  9. It has been hotter than hell here. We went to a few art and craft festivals, but nearly melted at one and got rained on at another. Went to a sunflower farm this week and it was miserably hot and humid. Grass is taking over the zennia bed, but don’t ask me if I care.

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    • I’m looking for the other side of August when it’s pleasant and not so rainy. It’s also hard to predict weather here. We were predicted to get torrential rains here yesterday but it was just humid and cloudy. Today it’s….you guessed it…humid and cloudy. Maybe rain later.

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  11. The worst is that we still have August coming up and hurricane season heats up in Aug. & Sept. Best is that maybe we will be spared another year and have a tropical storm to bring some rain before too long. Nice that you have flowers and water lilies!

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  12. Your comparisons crack me up. Has anyone voted on making seasons shorter so that we can trade off the things we don’t like? We had the longest, coldest spring I ever imagined. That’s something I would have longed for, but when I got it, I wished we could walk without a jacket. Two months of each season would be quite enough for me. That might make birthdays come around more often, though. Scratch that idea!

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  13. The worst was the extreme heat this summer (121.8 F one day), and the worst was when the heat broke because the monsoons started and we can’t get our leaking roof fixed. Oh, you said BEST and worst? hahah

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    • I feel so foolish sometimes. Especially when I don’t need it but I didn’t take one for lunch one day last week and was very uncomfortable! Our temps have broken but the humidity hasn’t. If I wring the air, I could get water out of it.

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  16. I spent too many years in almost constant heat and humidity in Florida. So glad to be back up north again. Dryer more pleasant weather is supposed to be headed our way for tomorrow. Yay! Hope the forecast is similar for you. 🙂

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    • I read something in yesterday’s newspaper that locally it’s not a good year for tomatoes and peppers. We’ve had a lot of rain but mostly in hard downpours which are not good for them. We have had some very hot weather though. It’s been a roller coaster all summer. The predictions don’t even get close.

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  20. we have rain and a cloudy sky… a nice fall weather if we had october… not even the super summer sale works this year… maybe shorts and espandrilles aren’t the hot sellers this year, trecnch coats and wellies are the objects of desire :o(

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