SUMMER???

“Winter is over,” opined a son yesterday. “Now we’ll have two weeks of spring and it will be summer and hot.” With his next message he said, “Correction: It’s already hot.”

And he’s right. It’s hot. Too hot. Unseasonably hot! We’ve moved quickly from lows in the 30s and highs in the 60s to lows at 50 and highs at or above 90. The forecast shows a warm weekend into the first few days of the week, and then it will be a little cooler, but the mountain snow is melting quickly now, and flood watches are in effect.

Suddenly we have to shift to summer mode. We no longer want hot tea. We’re draining our supply of ice cubes. We wear t-shirts and shorts instead of sweats and jackets. Yard work beckons. We think twice about turning on the oven. Winter bedding is too much (but I know better than to put it away). Bess is shedding and uncomfortable. We feel pressed to plant the garden.

Mike “summer-ized” our wood stove this morning, removing the wood box and vacuuming the area. “You might be a bit previous with that,” I called, but he said he can always make a fire if we need it.

We feel summer coming and we welcome the warmth if not the heat. However, summer brings challenges to the Pacific Northwest. We enjoyed a relatively quiet and safe winter while much of the rest of the country was hammered by violent storms. Some folks predict this is the new norm. Now we wonder what the summer months will bring. Draught and wildfires? Will our gardens be successful? Will the crops develop satisfactorily? Some neighborhoods here are already required to ration water due to the failure of a reservoir. As always, we can only wait and see what the future will bring. KW