Hot and Dry

As predicted our temps are back up into the late-Summer range, our windows are closed again, and the air conditioners are running... but that didn't stop us from cranking up the oven and doing what we always feel called to do in the fall: make apple pie. Two pies, to be exact.

With the cool air pumping through the house and the smell of apples and cinnamon filling up our space, it helped us to feel like fall was here anyway.

Then it was time to head back outside to do the work we're still doing this fall-

-watering. October is supposed to be our second-wettest month, but we haven't seen a drop of rain yet and all the weather predictions have this pattern holding: hot and dry. It's kinda a bummer. No fall flowers to speak of, no color in the leaves yet (except brown as everything dehydrates), and lots of sweat as we water and water and water on 90-degree early autumn afternoons.

It leaves me feeling so thankful for gardeners doing their autumnal work so their successfully maintained orchards and pumpkin patches can provide us with pumpkins on our doorsteps and apple pies cooling on our counters, even when everything around us is drying up and dying.

It'll break soon enough, I know, but wow does that rainy May we had this year seem like a distant memory... and oh how I wish we could cut and paste some of that weather into our coming weeks!

*sigh*