The weird weather we’ve had this summer is apparently not over yet. Late last week, a short heat wave blazed through, peaking on Friday with a high of 37o C. And while that may not seem like a big deal to those of y’all who live in places like Arizona, India, central Australia, and North Africa where such temperatures are not unusual in the summer, they’re highly unusual here on the Olympic peninsula, especially in a year when the rest of the summer was unusually cool. Luckily, the heat wave was so short-lived it wasn’t really much of a stress on the animals, who just hid out under the trees most of the day; of course, the piggies still wanted their cracked corn lunch, so I turned on the sprinkler for them to enjoy while eating. And since I know a lot of y’all are Cicero & Louie fans, here’s a short video for your enjoyment.
Posts Tagged ‘Sunset’
Diary #741
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset, Washington (state) on September 10, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Diary #740
Posted in Diary, tagged psychology, Sunset on September 3, 2024| 3 Comments »
Last week, a couple of dear friends I haven’t seen in quite some time came to visit, so naturally we spent as little of the time sober as was possible because that’s just the way we roll (no pun intended). And once again the wisdom of building the new wing was clearly demonstrated, not only because I had guest cottages to offer each of them, but also because we had a beautiful space, a sound system for music, rugs and blankets brought from my incall, and a nice fire for our party; both friends commented that the transferred decor created a sense of continuity from The Den, where we used to have such parties back in the old days. But now we have a lot more space and no street noise or potentially-nosy neighbors, and when someone faded out she could crawl into a nice bed rather than try to make do on the floor or the couch or half of my bed. And best of all, everyone who visits here notices the calm, comfortable energy of Sunset; guests often find themselves sleeping a lot later than they intended because they feel safe and welcome, and because it’s got just the right level of quiet: wind and birds and the occasional animal noise, but no engines or slamming doors or shouting strangers or sirens. Whenever close friends visit, I remind them that my door is always open for them and all they need do is let me know they’d like to visit, even if it’s just to retreat from the world for a time and recover from the stresses of daily life. And I’m happy to say that as time goes on, they seem to be taking advantage of that more often.
Diary #739
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset on August 27, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Even though the weather this year has not been good for my fruit or my sinuses, it apparently has been good for slugs. Usually, I see one of perhaps two of these fat fellows (typically longer than any of my fingers) a day while in the paddock or dealing with my tomatoes, but this year they’re all over the place, to the tune of half a dozen or more every time I go outside, and they’re bigger than usual (like, some about as big as a typical hot dog). In the morning I’ll often find one eating the dregs out of Cicero’s bowl; this year it’s sometimes two, and one morning last week I found four (and one was the aforementioned jumbo size). One day I walked to the mailbox and saw several crossing the lane, then later I looked out the kitchen window and saw two crossing my driveway (big enough to see from the kitchen window). I would imagine the ravens eat them, but I haven’t seen many of those around lately. Anyway, I thought those of y’all who aren’t squeamish about creepy-crawlies might like this picture, which I took on the macro setting to show detail; the artificial “shutter” sound must’ve startled it, because right after I took this it retracted its “horns” for a bit. I also had a good one of a slug in the barn, but as it was crawling on pony poop and the underside wasn’t as visible as in this shot, I decided to use this one. You’re welcome.
Diary #738
Posted in Diary, tagged disease, psychology, Sunset on August 20, 2024| 1 Comment »
Remember how many plums I had last year? Well, this is what the biggest tree looks like this year. And given that the weather is already turning wetter and chillier weeks earlier than is typical, I don’t expect a crop will soon burst forth. I’ve seen a fair number of blackberries on the vines and plan to pick this week, but I don’t think I’ll have enough to do much with them, so it’s up to the apple trees to salvage my fruit season (apple butter and mincemeat would be nice). Well, at least the turn of the weather seems to have cured my unusual allergy attack; I had one short relapse last week, but it faded pretty quickly and I’m back to breathing normally. The premature gloom seems to have also triggered my post-Dog Days recovery to start early; usually I start sleeping a lot better in the last week of August or the first week of September, but a few days ago I just crashed about a half-hour early one night and then overslept by an hour the next morning, and that pattern repeated twice more in the next few days. Obviously that’s due to it being rather dark well after dawn, but I’ll take it; still, given the allergies and the poor fruit yield, I’m hoping we don’t have another summer like this next year.
Diary #737
Posted in Diary, tagged psychology, Sunset on August 13, 2024| 1 Comment »
Practically as soon as last week’s diary column posted, all the tomato plants started fruiting. This picture is of the one that was already bearing last week; I think it won’t be long before I can gather a few to make fried green tomatoes. I’m still not sure about the rest of the fruit; it’s already turning chilly and overcast here, and the two-week forecast calls for more of the same, making this the shortest, coolest summer since I’ve been in Washington. And honestly, that doesn’t really bother me; my seasonal anxiety has been much less severe this year than usual, and perhaps once the rain starts again this damned allergy will finally go away. It had faded out after mid-July, so I thought I was done with it, but then it came roaring back last Friday night (though it passed much more quickly this time and was already much less severe by yesterday). Here’s hoping that whatever caused it doesn’t recur next year, because it’s nearly as bad as the anxiety; besides, it seems to be tied to the weird fruit weather, and we can’t have that become the new norm!
Diary #736
Posted in Diary, tagged Sunset on August 6, 2024| Leave a Comment »
It looks like this is going to be a weird year for fruit. The spring was both unusually cold and unusually rainy even by Olympic peninsula standards, and that persisted until the second week of summer; since then, we’ve had a cool summer broken by a week-long heat wave. The apple trees seem to be producing a lot of fruit, but the blackberry vines are acting really peculiar (lots of tiny green berries and a few big, plump black ones, but nothing red). And while one of my tomato plants has six or eight nicely-developing tomatoes, the other six plants have a few little flowers but no fruit. Sure, it’s still early; last year most of them were ready in September, but I’d expect to see something by now; maybe I need to fertilize them more or something. And if the apples turn out to be small, I guess I’ll still have enough for apple butter, and the pigs will enjoy the drops.
Diary #733
Posted in Diary, tagged recipes, Sunset, Washington (state) on July 16, 2024| 1 Comment »
The heat wave hung on until a week ago today, and though it wasn’t as bad as some of the heat waves we’ve had in recent years, it was bad enough (especially since I still haven’t managed to shake that allergy yet). Most summer days we’re in the low 20s Celsius, with occasional surges to the high 20s and plenty of sunshine and no rain at all. It looks like it’s pretty good for my tomatoes, as long as I keep watering them every day; I also need to fill troughs for for the animals nearly every day because the evaporation rate is pretty high this time of year (in sharp contrast to the ten months of the year that aren’t named after Roman emperors). All in all the summers here are much more annoying to me due to excessive light than to excessive heat, but when we do get the occasional heat wave in a house without air conditioning, icebox cake is a lovely cooler.
Diary #732
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset, video on July 8, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Even at the latitude of Sunset (and its proximity to the Pacific Ocean), it gets pretty damned hot here during heat waves. Once it hit 32o C on Friday I went out to connect the sprinkler for the pigs; they have no sweat glands, which is why they like to wallow in ponds or mud puddles in hot weather. But we don’t have a pond, so a few years ago I started running the sprinkler for them in afternoons when the temperature gets above 30o and the sun is too high for long shadows from the trees and buildings. I also move the large basin I normally have positioned below a downspout to collect rainwater for the animals; since there isn’t any rain to speak of here in July and August, I want it where it will fill from the sprinkler (or from the hose when I’m not running the sprinkler). It isn’t supposed to be much cooler until Wednesday, so here (as I promised readers on Twitter) is a picture of both Cicero and Louie enjoying their feed-corn lunch near their water trough while a cool mist falls upon them; you can also see several hens benefiting from the end of the sprinkler’s sweep into their coop, and Jonathan enjoying the shade on the other side.
Diary #730
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset on June 25, 2024| Leave a Comment »
When I was collecting eggs from the henhouse Friday, I came upon this: the tiniest pullet egg I’ve ever seen. It was very fragile, too; the shell was paper-thin and was broken when I found it, probably from being stepped on by another chicken. Usually, pullet eggs from late-February chicks start appearing in July, but these have been so precocious I really wasn’t all that surprised to find this one on the first full day of summer. What did surprise me was its color; this is the same color as the eggs laid by the Ameraucanas, and the sign at the store said they lay brown eggs. Perhaps the green color is only one of the pigments in a brown shell, and the others will come in later? I don’t know, but I’ll keep you posted; the way things are going, we probably won’t have long to wait.
Diary #729
Posted in Diary, tagged drugs, Sunset on June 18, 2024| 2 Comments »
I’m pretty sure it’s the daisies.
When an allergy shows up later in life, it’s usually something absent from the environment of one’s formative years. So when the severe allergic reaction I wrote about last week returned on Wednesday, virtually vanished while I was in town on Thursday, then got so bad Thursday night I got only barely-sufficient sleep, I asked myself what was present at Sunset but not in Aberdeen, and not in the New Orleans area or Oklahoma, and not even as abundantly at Sunset in previous years? And there was only one obvious answer: daisies. Oh, I’ve seen them here and there at Sunset in previous years, but this year there are so damned many it looks like I’m raising them as a cash crop. And the symptoms started ramping up just as they really started popping up like…well, like weeds. By Friday morning I just wanted to breathe through my nose again and get a decent night’s sleep, so I decided to try the suggestion a reader made in last Tuesday’s comments, and asked Chekhov to pick me up some before coming over for Grace’s birthday dinner. I’d tried nasal sprays before with little luck, but that was 40 years ago, so I figured maybe they’d improved. Well, the pharmacy Chekhov visited didn’t have the brand the reader suggested, so he got the stuff in the picture instead, figuring it was similar. And boy, did it work! Quite astonishingly well, in fact! About an hour after using it, I felt dramatically better; not totally well, mind you, but I could breathe properly and wasn’t blowing my nose every 15 minutes. And it did indeed last about 24 hours; I still woke up a lot, but a quick nose-blow and roll over, and I went right back to sleep. I assume the allergy will fade in a few weeks once the daisy mating season is done, but at least I won’t be miserable until then. And next year I’ll know what to do when the damned things pop up again.
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