Endless summer?

Maybe this is just a mini-summer. You can't even call it Indian Summer, because we haven't yet had any cold weather to speak of. Morning low temperatures match the afternoon high temperatures we used to expect in June or July just a few years ago. Today, we're supposed to be in the mid-70s F, and tomorrow the high might hit 80. It's all very weird. We took good advantage of yesterday's warm weather — Walt got the vegetable garden plot all cleaned up, and I pulled grass and weeds that had started growing up on the gravel walkway around the house. Because of abundant rains after a scorching summer, nature seems to think it's springtime.

The woman reading the news on Télématin just said in French what I wrote above in English. Plants' heads are spinning because of this mild weather. They're growing like they normally grow in April and May. We have weeds galore. In vegetable gardens, squash plants are still blossoming. Bean plants are still producing beans. Sunsets, instead of being gloomy and gray, look like this one. I took the photo above three days ago. It's all bizarre. In the past, the arrival of November has always meant there was a chill in the air and a gray, overcast sky — if not worse. Maybe everything will change next week.

So when Nature hands you hot weather, what do you do? You make summertime food. One of the tomatoes in this salad we had as part of our lunch yesterday came from the supermarket, but the other one came out of the vegetable garden yesterday morning. There are a dozen more garden tomatoes in a basket in the kitchen. Basil is still growing in a pot on the front deck. Today for lunch we'll be having sausages cooked on the barbecue grill. Instead of damp Toussaint days, we're enjoying Quatorze Juillet weather.