Midwesterners are professional weather crabbers. That is to say, complaining about the weather is pretty much our main hobby. The first sentence out of the mouth of many a midwestern baby has been, “Hot enough for ya?” or of course, “Cold enough for ya?” And that’s pretty much what we say for the rest of our lives. It’s basically what comes after “Hello” in any given conversation.
I do my best to avoid complaining about the weather on the blog too much because it just gets old after awhile. But after yet another 50-degree mid-June day, I think I’ve earned the right to complain a little.
My biggest problem with the weather is what it’s doing to the plants. The tallest peas, which I actually planted on time this year, are only about 16 inches tall. The tomatoes appear to be stuck in some kind of time warp; most of them don’t look like they’ve budged since I put them in the ground. That’s just what’s happening in the veggie garden. The annuals are ridiculously small this year and I can see that it will be a good month before the containers even look like anything. The buds on the peonies are just nickel-sized and the clematis look like they want to bloom but are afraid to.
The tomatoes and the few basil plants that look like anything anymore all seem to be stuck some sort of time warp: they don’t seem to have grown at all.
Over on the other side of the garden, the peas are finally starting to climb but there is no sign of any peas. The lettuce is doing great and the beets and Swiss chard in the foreground are in dire need of thinning.
A new plant I’m trying this year is malabar spinach. It’s supposed to be a beautiful vining plant and the leaves, which are quite thick, taste like buttery delicious spinach. I hope it lives up to the hype but it too hasn’t done much since it was planted.
There are a few things that seem to like the weather. The lettuce is delicious and plentiful and the hostas seem particularly large this year. The only other good thing about the weather is that I’m so far behind in my garden maintenance that I feel like I have a little more time to get things in shape before “real” summer weather arrives.
So am I suffering alone here or has the weather in your part of the world been lousy too?
What would you like to know?
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