Summer Is Still Holding On

Today is the first day of fall, but the weather here hasn’t gotten that memo.  The temperature got up to 90 degrees today.  We’re forecast to have high temperatures all week, and are even expected to break a few heat records this week.

There are definite signs that summer is still holding hold when you walk around the yard.

We have cherry tomatoes.  We didn’t plant cherry tomatoes this year.  Or last year.  We actually stopped planting them a few years ago because they take over everything. 

The butterfly bush still has some blooms.

One of the azaleas on the shady side of the house has a few blooms. 

The hydrangea bush still has a few blooms holding on. 

The pink rose bush is blooming again.  It always has a few more blooms toward the end of September.

The rose bush we bought on clearance, half dead, a few years ago has more blooms. 

The yellow rose bush has a few more blooms.

The roses all bloom early in the season, lose their blooms, and then bloom again in September.  It’s like they want to hold on to summer as long as they can before going dormant for winter.

I still have the summer flag up.  It seems a little too warm to change over to a fall flag yet.

I think the sky is the most beautiful blue in late summer and early fall.

There wasn’t a cloud in sight when I went to lunch today.  It was very tempting not to go back to work this afternoon. 

I wouldn’t mind slightly cooler temperatures, but I’m happy summer is holding on for a little longer.

What about you?  Does it look and feel like fall where you are?  Or is summer still holding on?

A Winner & An Apology

So I may be the worst blogger ever.  My deepest apologies.  All I have to say for myself is that the summer just got away from me.  I can’t believe we’re already officially a week into fall.

The winner of my June Is Adopt A Cat Month feature is PAWS.  You can read more about them at Animal Shelter Volunteer Life.  The check is finally in the mail.  I am so sorry it is so late!  Thank you to everyone who participated.

Our summer was crazy and busy; some bad stuff, some good stuff, mostly just life. 

Nick’s grandfather, who has always been incredibly healthy and active, was hospitalized, and now has a major heart problem.  I’ll try to make a long story short.  He was initially hospitalized for pneumonia, after Urgent Care sent him to the Emergency Room and the Emergency Room sent him to ICU, largely as a precaution due to his age.  Less than 12 hours later he was on a ventilator.  Things were very up and down, and he ended up being moved to a different hospital.  He’s home now, and will be going back for major heart surgery later this week.  If optimism counts for anything, he should be just fine.

This has been the summer of appliances for us.  We finally bought a small chest freezer after talking about it for years.  We planted a much bigger garden this year, and everything lived, so it was nice to be able to freeze so many things.  The CSA boxes have also been very full most weeks.  I had mixed feelings about adding a second freezer when it’s just the two of us, but I think it’s a good thing.  Using our own homegrown produce this winter instead of paying outrageous prices for it in the grocery store should help make up a lot of the cost of the freezer.  And I’ve been able to freeze things like home-made chicken broth that we just didn’t have room for before. 

Our HVAC finally gave up.  We’ve known for a while that we would be replacing it sooner rather than later.  No one is sure when our old one was put in, but everyone who ever came to work on it said you just didn’t see those anymore.  There’s a chance it was as old (or older) than we are, so it did its time.  “Sooner” became “now” in July, though it took until August to get everything together to get it done.  The new unit is great.  It doesn’t run all of the time like the old one did, and we’ve noticed a difference in the power bills.  I’m very excited about the heat working better this winter! Hopefully no more mornings of waking up to ice crystals on windows. 

I’ve often heard that things happen in threes, and that proved to be the case for buying appliances for us when the washing machine died/flooded. I was doing laundry before my sister came to visit, and when I went to move it from the washer to the dryer I walked through standing water. That’s never a good sign.  We thought we had it fixed and it flooded again. We finally determined that fixing it properly was going to cost about as much as a new washing machine, so we opted to get a new one.  I’m mildly obsessed with doing laundry, so I’m still really excited about the new one. It’s High Efficiency, and it’s huge.  It can handle a dog bed, which is a big deal in our house.

No summer would be complete without something involving pets.  We fostered two adorable little kittens for about a month.  More on them later, because that much cute has to have a separate post.  We also officially adopted Duke (we’re currently at about a 50% “fail” rate as foster parents).  More on that later as well.  Duke’s journey has been long and intense. 

The garden did better than it ever has before.  We put in two raised beds, and (mostly) maintained what we had before.  We ended up with lots and lots of squash, zucchini, peppers, basil, and tomatoes.  We shared quite a bit, and froze quite a bit to enjoy later.  I think we would have had more, but I hurt my back and the garden was left largely untended for nearly three weeks.  The cherry tomatoes are still going strong, though; last year they made it almost to the end of October.  The basil is still holding on, though it’s no longer thriving.  Now I just need to get out there and pull out all of the dead plants. 

So what about you?  How was your summer?  I’m looking forward to catching up and seeing what I missed. 

Friday Favorites – My Favorite Things About the End of Summer

***This is the first post in a new series called Friday Favorites – every Friday I will release a new Friday Favorites topic.  Participation is easy, just link up to the latest Friday Favorites post and let us know in the comments that you’re participating so we can all check out your favorites.  Next week’s Friday Favorites topic will be “your favorite poem”.  ***

I can’t believe how fast the year is flying by.  It seems like we were just taking down the Christmas tree and now Labor Day weekend has come and gone.

Labor Day seems to mark the end of summer, though according to the calendar, fall doesn’t begin until September 22^nd this year.  So it seems like the next couple of weeks mark the tail end of summer.  I’ve always loved the very end of summer. 

I love how the nights and mornings are already a little cooler.  The days are still warm, even a little hot some days, but the nights and early mornings are cooler.  The air conditioner doesn’t run as much, and there’s a peaceful silence late at night and early in the morning.

I’m enjoying harvesting the very last of the garden produce.  In our garden, we’re down to only cherry tomatoes, but they are still going strong, and are still sweet and delicious.  It’s interesting to see how much longer they will last.  

There’s also an anticipation in the air.  Fall is coming and seems to be on everyone’s mind. Some might argue that anticipating fall isn’t part of summer’s end, but I think it is.  There’s a rhythm to swapping out the summer clothes for warmer pieces and breaking out the soup and stew recipes in anticipation of using them soon.  Sometimes looking forward to something is better than the event itself.  The end of summer offers that for fall. 

The end of summer offers the ritual of the last time wearing certain clothes and shoes this year, or the last trip to the pool, or last vacation this year.  Some things are made so much sweeter when there’s a finite time for enjoying them – watching the tan lines fade and putting away the breezy summer dresses until next year.  I love to savor the very end of summer and watch it slowly turn into the beginning of fall. 

Summer Vegetable Pizza

This pizza is quick, easy, delicious, and a great way to make use of the summer produce.  You can play with the measurements and ingredients to make use of whatever cheese and vegetables you happen to have on hand.  We seem to use a slightly different combination of vegetables (depending on what we have on hand) each time, but it’s always really good.

1 refrigerated pre-made pizza crust

2 Tbsp olive oil

2 – 4 garlic cloves, pressed or chopped (we use 4 because we love garlic)

Italian Seasoning

Parsley

Salt & Pepper

1 onion, thinly sliced

Squash and/or Zucchini, sliced

Tomatoes, sliced

Shredded Cheese

Roll the crust out on a bar pan or cookie sheet.  If you’re using a well seasoned pan you don’t need to oil the bottom, if not you’ll want to oil the bottom of your pan.  Mix garlic cloves into olive oil and spread over crust.  Sprinkle with Italian Seasoning and Parsley.  

Bake at 350 for 8 – 11 minutes.

Sprinkle cheese over the crust.  It’s really good if you use a mix of cheddar and mozzarella.  Then layer on your vegetables.  Sprinkle the veggies with Italian Seasoning, parsley, salt and pepper to taste.  Layer on some more cheese. 

Bake at 350 for 15 – 18 minutes.

Enjoy! 

Another Scorcher

This weekend was another scorcher here, with temperatures near 100 degrees.  It seems that it was unbearably hot in quite a few places though.  Once again the air conditioner just wasn’t able to keep up, so it stayed around 79 degrees in the house for most of the weekend.  The humidity was up as well, which seems to be what makes it truly horrible.  Even the dehumidifier wasn’t able to keep up.

It seems a little unfair that the weekends seem to be the scorchers, with temperatures dropping back down to bearable levels during the week, only to increase to miserable levels again by the weekend.  At least that seems to have been the pattern for the past couple of weeks here.  It feels a bit like being cheated on the weekend.  I’m not sure how it is for most of you, but the air conditioning at work seems to do a much better job of keeping up with the higher temperatures than the air conditioning at home.  I guess I should just be thankful that I work in an air conditioned building.

Because it was so hot we spent most of the weekend watching movies, we just didn’t have the energy for much else in the heat.  We watched Big Miracle, which was great (I’m a huge Drew Barrymore fan), though it did make my husband start talking (again) about wanting to move to Alaska.  If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s definitely worth checking out, just make sure your significant other knows if you aren’t willing to relocate to Alaska.

Here’s another summer crock-pot recipe as well.  It’s very tasty, and doesn’t heat the house up to make.  You can change it up some by using different dressings and wraps if you want something a little different.

Italian Turkey Wraps

1 split turkey breast (also works with a whole turkey breast, just double your seasoning and water)

1 package of Italian Dressing Mix

1 ½ cups water

Whole Wheat Tortillas

Shredded Romaine Lettuce

Chopped Bell Pepper

Chopped Red Onion

Italian Dressing

Place  turkey in slow cooker and sprinkle with dressing mix, pour in water, cover and cook on Low for 4 – 5 hours.

Remove turkey from slow cooker, and shred with a fork.

Place turkey, lettuce, onion, and bell pepper in tortillas, and drizzle lightly with Italian salad dressing.  Enjoy!  

The good news is that it’s beginning to cool down some today, and we’re expecting temperatures in the high 70s during the middle of the week.  I can’t wait!  We’re expected to have thunderstorms for most of the next week, but at the moment that seems like a small price to pay for more reasonable temperatures.

So what about you?  Is there any relief in sight or are you due for another scorcher?  I hope you’re keeping cool.

Surviving the Heat Wave

Has it been unusually and unbearably hot where you are this weekend?  It definitely has here.  The air conditioner stopped keeping up on Friday afternoon.  It was set at 71 and stayed at 79 through most of the night.  We thought that was probably at least due in part to me turning on the stove to make dinner; according to the thermometer on the refrigerator it was 85 degrees in the kitchen.

After that I decided I wouldn’t be turning the stove on for the rest of the weekend.   It’s very tempting just to go out for dinner, especially if that means an hour or two in a place where the air conditioning works better than ours, but that’s just not in the budget, especially in thinking what the power bill will be like after the air conditioner’s struggle to keep up.  Instead I’ve been using some of my summer slow cooker recipes.  Here’s one for a wonderful chicken salad:

Summer Chicken Salad

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and parsley for cooking)

½ cup seedless green grapes

½ cup seedless red grapes

1 medium apple, chopped

¼ cup honey mustard

2/3 cup Miracle Whip

Place chicken breasts in slow cooker with spices and cover with water.  Cover and cook on Low for 3 – 5 hours.  When chicken is fully cooked remove from water and shred with a fork.  Allow chicken to cool to room temperature. Combine chicken with remaining ingredients, mixing well. 

We had this on croissant rolls, along with salad and fruit last night.  It was a nice light dinner in the heat.  Despite not using the stove the house stayed at 81 degrees for most of last night.  We told ourselves it would have been worse if I had turned on the stove and/or oven.

I also made sure to hang up all of the laundry outside to dry yesterday instead of running the dryer.  I’ve been making more of an effort to do that this summer.  It just makes sense; it’s more earth friendly, it saves money, and we’re hoping that by not heating up the house as much with the dryer we can help our air conditioning unit (which our Realtor joked was probably brought over on the Mayflower) hobble along for another couple of years. 

The only problem in hanging up the laundry outside is that we don’t actually have a clothesline yet, so it involves some creativity in hanging the clothes on the porch and a little accordion clotheslines meant for drying delicates inside.  I am proud to say, though, that I managed to dry four loads of laundry outside this weekend.   

We’re pretty sure we need to go with an umbrella clothesline (my husband calls them collapsible clotheslines; we think possibly umbrella might be the common southern term and collapsible the common Yankee term) due to the size of our backyard, the location of the trees, and where the sunny parts are.  I’ve looked at some online, and most of them aren’t reviewed very well.  The consensus seems to be that they’re fine if you only hang one load of relatively light-weight laundry on them, but most seem to bend or break if you hang towels, comforters, or jeans on them.  So I’m still on a mission to find an umbrella clothesline that’s reviewed well, or at least not terribly.  Does anyone have one they’re happy with and would recommend?  Or a suggestion for finding a good one?

It also looks like the temperatures will be going back down to the high 80s here starting Tuesday.  They’ll be in the low 90s tomorrow, instead of the high 90s or 100, so that’s definitely an improvement.  The air conditioner seems to be able to keep up as long as stays below about 94 degrees, so we’re pretty excited about the drop.

So what about you, how have you been faring in the heat?  What tricks have you been using to keep cool?