July 5th.
Finally saw the sun today after what seems like weeks. This sunshine combined with the steady and sometimes stiff Northwest wind will go a long way toward drying out the soggy soil that has, in the past, been called Hope’s Edge garden. It is, however a long long way that we need to go before these fields can be called gardens again.
The pleasant day afforded me the opportunity to walk the garden and fields taking stock. What I saw is not the scene that makes a gardeners’ heart soar. I will describe in the next few paragraphs the situation that we the gardeners and you the consumers currently find ourselves. I am providing this somewhat bleak description not to depress you but in order to put us all on the same page with regards to the season ahead.
First, a note about last months’ weather. Unless you’ve been sailing in the Bahamas for the last month you don’t need me to tell you that it’s been wet. How wet? Record setting wet. Eleven and a quarter inches of rain fell in June surpassing the old record of 10 inches set in June 06. The average precipitation for June is three and a half inches. (This begs the question; Are extremely wet Junes going to become more commonplace? Some climate scientists say yes.) In addition its been colder than normal. The highest temperature for all of last month was only 73 degrees; 14 degrees cooler than the highest June temperature last year. We also had two mornings of frost last month. Continue reading “July 5th– rain rain go away”