Summer

This was one of those wonderful summers. The weather was good for almost the entire summer (Hurricane Irene being the one hiccup). The Good Mr. Dr. spent the early part of the summer tending to the vegetable beds. He planted a ton of veggie and it shows.

August 2011

The east bed

This is the first summer where we raised so much of our own fruits and veggies. Here’s what we learned:

• Lettuce of any kind (we planted mesclun) is the gift that does not stop giving. We were harvesting this well into July.
• Brussels sprouts are 1) huge and 2) picky. They did not like the cherries tomatoes and literally leaned over the middle part of the beds in order to get away from them.
• When it comes to cucumbers, eggplants, and pumpkins – you win some and you lose some.
• Both sugar snap peas and cherry tomatoes need at least a 5 foot trellis.
• Blueberries do not come in every year.
• If the grapes survive, they can get very sweet.

At the beginning of fall, we filled the car with the perennial flowers. We need to plant these before we plant the bulbs.

Yep. The hatchback was a good choice.

The southern flower bed

The northern flower bed

The western border

As the summer plants in the front began to die back, we planted some red mums to brighten things up. The climbing rose didn’t produce after that first flowering, but it is definitely growing.

The end of summer brought Hurricane Irene. We were very lucky that it didn’t hit us head on. We got significant amounts of rain and wind, but for the most part, we were very lucky.



We were much luckier than our neighbors to the west and northwest. There are towns in Vermont that became cut off from the rest of the world because their roads were literally washed away. The poor folks in Western Massachusetts experienced the worst weather all year. Earlier in the year there were tornadoes that destroyed parts of small towns and entire farms in Central and Western Massachusetts. Even the City of Springfield was affected. We made our annual pilgrimage to the Brimfield Antiques Fair, where we bought some door knobs and other door parts. On the way we could see the damage the tornados wrought on the farms and woodlands around Brimfield. It definitely made us count our blessings.

We drove past this area on our way to the antiques fair. You can see the tornado's path really clearly.
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As happens every year, summer came to an end. We were able to spend almost a month doing almost nothing but reading and gardening. We also worked, but the reading and gardening were what we remember the most. You can't really ask for a better summer.