As The Weekend Pundit noted a while ago, our summer lasted 2 1/2 weeks this year (note that he wrote that last month). We have had some fine fall weather though, most of last week was in the high 60's - low 70's, although since Friday we have been in the 50's.
Since lately we have been getting rain only on the weekends (actually this weekend is the first rain of the month), I have ridden the bike in to work 3 or 4 days a week. This has pushed my mileage up quickly and I expect to hit 8,000 miles on Tuesday. For refererence, I was at about 3,000 miles at the beginning of the year and I bought the bike at the end of May 2008. WS has been riding in to work a lot too, so we are both saving massive miles on our 4-wheel vehicles as well as getting better than twice the MPG.
We have a couple of more weeks of riding before morning temps make riding really uncomfortable; we should be able to get at least 1/2 way into October. So far the lows have been only down to 42, cut off point is in the low 30's, so it really depends on Mother Nature.
With the temps as low as they have been, the garden is pretty much done for. That sucks in a big way as we got no corn (although we did get ears to start forming), I picked about 10 peppers (less than 1 per plant), and 5 tomatoes. The green beans and peas did okay and I seem to have a couple of really miniature pumpkins trying to ripen up. Also some of the evolunteer squash vines have produced fruit that will probably be pickable soon.
We got no blackberries as they were decimated by the Japanese beetles. My neighbor, who threatened me with great bodily harm if I didn't pick blueberries from her bushes this year, never called to say she had any ripen, so I am assuming a total failure there too. Dang good thing we don't have to feed ourselves from the gardens!
Bogie--That is so great that you and WS can ride your motorcycles to work and then go on your weekend excursions free to your wallet and the environment. Too bad your riding season is so short; but, I know you must enjoy your winters!
Sorry about the garden. I've always thought that the biggest gamblers in the world are the farmers - especially the small ones who don't have the acreage to diversify very much. I'm picking lots of peppers (mostly Hungarian yellow wax, but some green), and our second crop of dill is coming up from self-seeding (a black swallowtail butterfly was flitting about the little 1" seedlings, yesterday, perhaps finding a place to lay eggs), but the tomatoes did zilch. As you may recall, our strawberries did zilch this spring; but, the new bed looks in shape to outproduce the remains of the old bed (which is still creeping further out of its bounds) next spring. Let's keep our fingers crossed for better crops for the both of us.
Posted by: Cop Car | September 15, 2009 at 09:40 AM