Summer is a few days more than half finished. Weather remains noncompliant. Again, I should not get redundant by describing how last spring lingered, with only a few days of summery warm weather. Instead, I can now describe how the weather is beginning to be more like that of autumn. There is still time for some warm weather through September and perhaps even into October here. For now, we can simply appreciate the comfortably mild weather. During a typically warm summer, this is about when we begin to miss the rain. It might finish during March, and might not resume until November. The dew this morning looked almost like raindrops, but even a native Californian can distinguish dew from real rain.

1. Mornings start out atypically cool and damp. It is not exactly hazy. Nor is it uniformly foggy. It almost looks cloudy. It has been doing this for much of this oddly mild summer.

2. Friday morning was so damp that the dew resembled rain. It left spots on windshields of the work pickups, although such spots were not circular as if caused by real raindrops.

3. Banana trees and other species that appreciate warmth are growing unusually slowly. This happens to be the rare Musa ingens, which is the biggest banana tree in the World.

4. ‘Ponderosa’ lemon is slightly chlorotic, likely because of the lack of summer warmth. I should remove the fruit to redirect resources. One lemon can grow to weigh two pounds.

5. Giant reed is one of the most aggressively invasive exotic species within riparian zones of California. It does not seem so aggressive in cultivation here while the weather is cool.

6. ‘Proud Land’ rose bloomed nicely and nearly on schedule last spring, and continues to bloom, although somewhat reluctantly. I installed this now old specimen in about 1984.

This is the link for Six on Saturday, for anyone else who would like to participate: https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/six-on-saturday-a-participant-guide/

20 thoughts on “Six on Saturday: Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer”

    1. Thank you. There are three. I planted the first in about 1984 or 1985, during my junior or senior year. It grew major suckers in its first year. I wrote to the grower, who sent me a replacement for the second year. Well, before I was aware of this replacement, I purchased another specimen. As the second and third specimens grew and bloomed for their first season, the first also grew, but without suckers! Anyway, all three are here now, all these years later.

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    1. Gads! That is one of my pet peeves about the ‘climate’ here! A drought is an unusually dry weather pattern. If it is not unusual, it is not a drought. It is climate. Dry summers are perfectly normal here. It is how the climate works, so is not a drought.

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      1. I think the newspaper once mentioned that every summer was a virtual drought. I’d never thought about it until then, but every year I ran around watering and trying to keep stuff alive until fall.

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      2. Droughts sometimes happen, and there was a significant drought in about 1976 or so, but nowadays, there is no distinguishing between normal weather and drought. If a drought actually happens, I would not believe it.

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      6. Not only was there no rain, but there was no indication that the remnants of a storm passed by so closely. Humidity was unusually high, but that was about all.

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