We got hit with a triple whammy - TS Irene, followed by a cold front that grabbed her tail as she passed by. The remnants of Lee came along just in time to keep the rain faucet turned on. I noticed I went from sweating in shorts & tank top to chilly in long sleeves/pants in less than an hour which is certainly extreme enough to prove the old adage, if you don't like the weather in New England just wait a minute...it'll change. I actually went from having the A/C on one minute and the next I was shutting it off along with the ceiling fans and opening the windows to let in some warmer air.

We got 5 inches of rain last week from TS Irene. When I checked my rain gauge yesterday at 5 p.m. it showed we got another 1.5 inches. It's been raining steadily ever since so I'm guessing when I check it today we'll have another inch or two on top of that. Forecast says there's a front stalled offshore & calls for steady rain right through midnight.

Summer is definitely over altho' I hope/expect we'll see a mild day here and there before the end of September.

Just this weekend it was so hot and in particular so humid that I didn't make good use of time I might have spent gardening. I start a two week vacation on Friday, and I look forward to cooler days to garden. Summer is great, but the ideal time to work in the garden is spring and fall.

Sadly it may be.... come ON Indian summer!!

Here is a link that might be useful: Sept in a glance

Hurricane Irene's wind-driven salt air (I'm 800 ft. from the ocean) did an Autumn job on most of my trees: the south-facing sides have lost a lot of their leaves and what's left on those sides are blackened, crisp little leaf corpses. The grass is littered with fallen dead leaves.

Most trees and shrubs within, say, 1/2 mi. of the ocean were affected similarly. Not lovely reds and yellows, but dingy crumpled brownish leaves, very sad.

So it's Autumn on the coast already, in terms of what it looks like. Will somebody please tell the tomato plants to stop producing? I have no more room in the freezer.

Carol

Well meteorological summer is over Sept 1st. So yes, most of the very warm weather is over.

However, I'm hoping we're going to have a long, warm fall. It's probably just wishful thinking, except that I have some evidence from nature herself! A Monarch female laid a lone egg on the common milkweed on September 2nd. With cooler temps, it would take a minimum of a month for this egg to become an adult butterfly. This puts us into October - very late for an emerging tropical butterfly in this location! So maybe, the butterfly knows something about the weather we don't?? (Like I said, probably just a female dumping eggs along her way, and my wishful thinking...)

Summer is over tho we can look forward to a lot of beautiful weather. It's the shorter days that say it for me, and the sun, lower in the sky, even at mid-day.

But I look forward to September and harvest festivals, and October which truly may be New England's finest hour. There is always something to look forward to here.

Said the poet--

"O suns and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October's bright blue weather."

--Helen Hunt Jackson

To read the poem

Here is a link that might be useful: October's Bright Blue Weather

Thanks, ginny12, "October's Bright Blue Weather" is a very good poem and the term is a great description of the way October feels, all clean and shiny and grown-up.

Claire (we won't mention January yet)

Jan is not so bad..its Feb that I hate.. COLD sledding is not fun snows all ugly out of money and room for garden catalogs

My hummers are gone, I think. Sigh. Yep, I think it's over.

Saw the hummer yesterday around 5 p.m. feeding from my Agastache rupestris so they're still here. I'm sure it was the cardinal flower that brought him in but the A. rupestris is planted just across the walkway from it.

Today was warm, sunny and there was no noticeable breeze so it was one of those perfect weather days we cherish because there are so few of of them over the course of a year.

I planted more winter sown perennials after work--two gallon-size pots of globeflower near an established one to give lots of bright color next spring. That leaves me with just 128 to go before frost...

Just to help you all feel better; I hear it's been especially cold in NE this week, but I've been at a meeting in Tempe, AZ, so I've missed the cool down.

It's so hot here, even in mid-September, that you can't really go outside until sunset. The locals are all sighing with relief because it's finally below 110, after a long heat wave. I wouldn't trade the weather here for what we have at home for anything (except maybe for a couple of weeks during Jan and Feb).

Irene denuded a lot of my trees, too, mostly maples. So, I suppose there won't be much color next month, except for what's left of my poor Franklinea, which lost about half of its limbs in the relatively mild winds of Irene.

The sun's just coming up and I can see the grass is all frosty white, so I guess it's time to harvest the winter squash and transplant peonies.

I'm hoping for an Indian summer so I covered the veggies that are still producing in hopes of eeking out a few more toms and peppers

My hummers aren't gone yet, just saw one on the Tithonia this morning. I still have lots of hummingbird plants blooming. It won't be long though, until they head south.

The weather is pretty cool here in NE CT, especially at night. My vegetables are still hanging in there, harvesting tomatoes, green beans and peppers. My kale just had a magnificent comeback after something got after them and ate a great deal of the leaves in mid August. Maybe I'll have enough to make a nice kale soup for this cool weather.
I think Irene really finished off the summer in my area. Oddly enough, everything is still very green, not one leaf has changed color yet... usually there are some here and there by this time.
Closed my pool yesterday - yes, to me, now summer is over!
Susan

Terrene, the hummers you are getting are probably coming from further north, on their migration. My resident hummers are gone. I get a straggler here and there, but it isn't long until there are no more. Bummer no hummer.

Although, I can't wait until my Miscanthus sinensis pops it's beautiful red plumes. The fall sunlight is nice when filtered through them. Quite a sight.