The Start of a New Season

This year has been brutal in many ways but, for now, I'm just referring to our climate. For months, we've had our house closed up with the air conditioning running because it has been unbearably hot and humid. We've had many rain days and so few days of clear skies that I could count on one hand the number of times I was able to use one of my telescopes in the past five or six months. So, we've had our air conditioning running just about daily during this period until the day before yesterday. 

Yesterday, the heat and humidity finally broke and I was able to open all the windows and doors in the house! That really felt great and I thought that perhaps we were finally due for some nice autumn weather. 

Wrong.

The temperature plummeted and this morning we needed to close every window in the house and use the stove to heat up the house. It was frigid! On the positive side, this first cold snap of the year always reminds me that it is time to test the furnace so that is now on my list of things to do as soon as possible.

The temperatures were so different last night from the past five months that I spent the night in bed shivering. I spent the morning shivering and bundled up in long sweats and a fleece sweatshirt. I'm still sitting here at my desk covered in fleece. I don't know what the weather will bring tomorrow or this week but, at this point, I'm not too optimistic.

So, it is abundantly clear that we are beginning a new season. 

That being said, because our summer was so hot and humid and a bit extended, we still have a yard full of flowers! I have to say, though, that they are only alive at this late date because I closely watched and cared for these flowers throughout our months of heat and humidity otherwise they would have died months ago. It was so hot here that I had to water our gardens, planters and window boxes three times a day. I also made sure that I fertilized with MiracleGrow at least once a week. As a result, we still have full, lush flowers like our home is an oasis in a desert of brown and mostly dead vegetation.

It is possible that tonight we will get some frost so I wanted to get a few photos of our very extended season of flowers before the next season takes over. I don't expect these flowers to be around for another week at this point. 

Usually, I'm complaining about all the work to get these gardens looking good which is a tremendous strain on my spinal injuries only to have a very short summer growing season here in Vermont. The short season always makes me wonder if all the spinal pain was worth it. This year, the only complaints (pertaining to the climate... certainly there was plenty of other stuff to keep us frustrated... it really has been a bad year) were about the heat, humidity and cloudy, foggy, hazy skies. 

The good thing about this brutal, harsh climate we've had is that we are well into September and the flowers which rarely make it beyond July are still flourishing in our yard. That is something worth writing about!