Ah, finally glorious summer!!! I love heat. I love humidity. I walk out into it and it feels like an embrace. Most people don’t feel that way, so I have to listen to a lot of complaints I don’t share in all summer.

The bee balm is flourishing.
Don’t get me wrong; there are temperatures I don’t like, but generally they’re over a hundred: the sort of temperature that makes you think you’ve opened an oven rather than a door to the outside. That I don’t like, but it doesn’t bother me the way it does other people.

Black-eyed Susans are beginning to blossom.
If I can dress for a temperature, I usually don’t mind it too much. I have the appropriate clothing for winter, for instance. If it’s 10 degrees and the wind is blowing, I make sure to wrap my face in a scarf and put on a down coat. If it’s going to be 87 and humid, I wear linen and carry a sweater or wrap for the inevitable chill of air conditioning.

The harvest Saturday morning.
But I do love summer and all the warmth. I like working in the garden and having to take a shower afterward. I don’t mind sweating as it means I’m warm. And goodness the sun feels so good this time of year. Sometimes I think I could be a photovoltaic cell, storing up energy for the inevitable cooler months.

The cucumbers could very well be prolific this year.
The garden is really beginning to produce. Beans, beets, carrots, summer squashes. That lovely lull in having to buy vegetables has arrived. This evening I had fresh beans from the garden, enhanced with a few carrots.

The beans have been coming on really well.
There’s nothing quite like summer, in all its glory: the scents of flowers, the different colors of green, the lushness of trees, the new growth on shrubs, fireflies, cut flowers. It’s all lovely and transient, ready to be noticed and enjoyed moment by moment.

These zinnias are protecting carrots from the rabbits AND providing color.
Have a good week, and by all means maintain your ideal temperature!
Ha Lisa! I so enjoyed reading this – your love of heat and humidity is not shared by me, but I love that you love it so very much! I always remember a photo of you taken in the garden in summer, you are kneeling or sitting, smiling, clearly very warm as you glow and your hair is wildly curly and you look very happy! I think it is a wonderful thing to enjoy so thoroughly this weather. I wilt and whine in humidity, it is not attractive!! The garden is looking lush and your photos show the very best of it. I am happy to have the chance to share in your enjoyment of your summer and your garden’s colourful produce – thank you!! ❤
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That’s so funny you remember that photo! My hair was wild. I thought I’d just put my summer love out there–knowing most people are fanning themselves! That picture is here at https://arlingwords.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/photo-2.jpg I think Boomdee said my hair should have its own agent.
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I love that pic of you, I’ve saved it into my album of friends 🙂
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I’m glad I could supply it!
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This post made me smile. You are a true child of summer, no matter when your birthday falls. And those vegetables look scrummy. Enjoy, enjoy!
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I do love summer. My birthday was only a few days ago, so I’m definitely a late spring baby! It’s so nice to be getting lovely veggies from the garden.
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I think your birthday is close enough to summer to count. Enjoy, enjoy!
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It is interesting, isn’t it, to hear complaints about things you experience, but enjoy. It is also pretty wonderful, isn’t it.
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I realize some people are miserable. Otherwise air conditioning would not be so cold! But summer is indeed pretty wonderful.
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I love the heat too – and am most uncomfortable with air-conditioning be it in the house or car. I much prefer having all the windows of everything wide open! If rabbits are afraid of zinnias I shall be getting some (zinnias) later this year!
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Yes, air-conditioning is mostly way too cold. I think the zinnias just hide the carrots. In any event the rabbits seem to have stopped eating the carrot tops. Zinnias definitely help keep ripening tomatoes safer, too. It’s a confusion of color, I think.
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I enjoy heat, but not humidity. More marvellous produce, Lisa.
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Yes, I think most people don’t like the humidity. It’s fabulous for the skin, though.
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🙂
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As surely as summer is the joy on fresh home grown and picked veg
. Soooper doooper!
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Thanks, Geoff! Fresh veg is certainly the best.
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Your harvest looks so fresh and brimming with flavor, Lisa. Growing your own food and plucking it from the soil, it doesn’t get any better than that.
You are lucky to be heat/humidity tolerant. I can take heat better than humidity, which makes me feel like I can’t breathe, a condition that has worsened the older I get, even when I try to stay hydrated. Luckily, so far, there aren’t too many of those days here in MA.
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I can see how someone might feel that way when it gets close. My skin is so dry in the winter, that it really has a different feel once humidity comes back. I had some buttered beets tonight. Yum.
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I can feel your joy, and it is good to read it. There is nothing better than the sun. It is my ultimate addiction! Even the winter one, that I am looking at through the window.
The veggies look great! Make the most of it.
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I know you’re in the middle of winter, so I’m glad to communicate some summer warmth.
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🙂
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Those zinnias are gorgeous!
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Thanks! They seem to grow really well here. Of course one year they grew too well and turned into zinnia thugs smothering everything in the garden. I’ve been sending them to charm school.
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Glad you’re keeping them in check so they can grace your garden (rather than invade!) 🙂
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Yes, it’s a matter of transplanting them out!
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How can it get so warm in summer and so cold in winter? I do not mind our warmth, but I would be annoyed if I had to deal with cold winters half a year later.
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We only have the hideous cold about two weeks in January or February. For the rest, it’s upper 30’s to mid-forties–pretty mild, so not so bad.
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30s and 40s is not so bad?!?!
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Upper 30’s, low 40’s–lots better than freezing, twenties, teens or worse. I guess it’s all in your perspective!
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Yes, or course. The lack of good winter chill limits the selection of many cultivars of apple, and is why peonies are unreliable for many of us.
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A lovely post, Lisa–you express that summer love so well, and your garden seems to love summer just as much! I’d be one of those complainers, I’m afraid. I was weeding the other day, in 70-something heat, and the sweat was dripping off my face onto the soil . . .
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Oh dear. I don’t start to sweat until the upper eighties–or more exertion than weeding. We are all so different in our thermostats!
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