Summer is finally here, just in time for the end of August and school starting again. It was a heart breaker of a summer, with days and days and weeks of rain and cool weather. My tomatoes succumbed to the fatal combination this week, showing textbook signs of late blight. I pulled them all out except for two, which looked marginal a couple of days ago and now look blighted also. Before I stuffed the carcasses into a trash bag (so the spores don't spread further), I carefully removed all of the green tomatoes and nestled them in a box. My plan was to try to ripen them between layers of newspaper, but when I checked them this morning, the body count was high; they are continuing to develop mushy brown spots. My new plan is to make a green tomato chutney...when life hands you green tomatoes, what else do you do with them?
Before I moved to New England, I never thought about describing weather in terms of night temperatures. Since there hasn't been much good to say about the weather this summer, I've noticed a focus on the good. "Good sleeping weather," people say. Of course, people up here don't generally have (or need) central AC, so when it gets hot, it's hard to sleep. We certainly haven't had that problem this summer, and it's a very optimistic way of looking at the past two months.
The other thing I never knew until a few years ago is that rocks sweat when it gets hot. In the woods behind out house, we'll go for a walk on a hot day and see the rocks all slippery with condensation. I'm still surprised when I see it.