It is lovely out there! I could appreciate an entire summer of this weather! (but without the mosquitoes :) )

Dorothy, It is nice outside in general, but we had a big industrial fire yesterday afternoon and it was unspeakably hot, hot, hot. I felt "cheated" out of the nice cool day I was expecting, but got to have a cool day today instead.

Ironically, now that the weather has cooled down and I ought to be out there enjoying the cooler temperatures, I'm busy in the kitchen blanching and freezing, canning, and dehydrating the harvest. I wish I could let all the fresh veggies just pile up in the kitchen this week while I am outside enjoying the cooler air, but it just doesn't work that way. I did manage to work in the garden a littlebit early, early this morning, but mostly I was just picking cucumbers and corn. It was 61 degrees when I went outside this morning and it almost felt cold. It was nice!

Tomorrow I need to pick tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, bell peppers, okra, more cucumbers and more corn. We're almost through harvesting the third of the five sweet corn varieties we planted, and I think that by the end of the week I'll just about be caught up on food preservation for a couple of days at least.

We are still in drought here, and no rain is falling lately, so all the green grass is quickly turning brown and the ground is cracking. I wish we'd get some decent rainfall along with the cooler temperatures, but that's not likely, at least in my part of the state.

Lisa, We have had mosquitoes in huge numbers for about a month now, but I didn't have any trouble with them yesterday...and I was outside from about 1 p.m. to 10 p.m., and I didn't have any today when I was out harvesting. Maybe we've gotten dry enough here that their numbers are starting to decrease. I hope that is the case. It is almost worth being dry if it means those skeeters will go away.

Dawn