No, No, No!!! It can't be fall yet. I haven't had one tomato ripen. Not one. They were put out late due to the cold spring (we don't put toms out here til 6/l usually, and this year it was a couple weeks late), then came the high 90's when they didn't set fruit; now I've got fruit but the nights have been in the 40's so everything is still green. The bell peppers are coming along, but not quite grown yet. The pumpkin vine hasn't got one pumpkin on it!

Oddly enough, the only thing producing is a dwarf sugar snap pea that was also planted very late and has lasted through the heat. The pods are small though and mostly I eat them before I get out of the garden.

Therefore,I demand at least one more month of summer!! I can't imagine not getting one tomato from the garden. I did get a really wonderful giant canteloupe from the farmer's market last week, though. It came from Nebraska. Unfortunately, many of our "local" farmers have to come from neighboring states because we don't grow much here besides beef. On the other hand, I do have two T-bones from locally grown, grass-fed, no-antibiotic cattle cooling in the freezer. The ranch that "grows" these has just started their own CSA. No vegetables or fruits, you understand, just a CSA of all beef. Yes, it's different here in Wyoming.

Maybe I can start a CSA for fresh eggs, WW . . .

d'S'

Ahhh. I have only had a few small tomatoes myself. I don't even try to grow cukes or melons. I am afraid it is going to be an early frost. The cold wet weather really cooled off the soil. The garter snakes have all moved up onto the porch to keep warm - nothing like tiptoeing through the snakes! It was a balmy 45 degrees at my house this am. It may only be August but mother nature doesn't care.

Keeping my fingers crossed, Nancy

I second windwhipped - we deserve at least one more month of summer. I have four sugar babies that are melon sized, but no browning of the tendril yet, at least 20 tomatoes that I can see with dozens more flowers, and tons of chile peppers that are barely getting big enough to start changing colors.

I've only had two tomatoes from the garden and those were from a plant I bought, none from the ones I grew from seed; one baby zucchini, one yellow squash, lots of green cherry bells and 6 eggplants.

Please sir...I want some more!

I don't know what to make of this year at all. Everything was late this year -- daffies, tulips, forsythia, cottonwood. The spirea didn't flower much. Didn't get my maters out until the first week of June. The maters are loading but not ripening with any enthusiasm.

I've been listening but the cicadas only started about 10 days ago and they usually start in the middle of July. So I have no clue what to make of the summer of 08. Very strange.

digit, you could probably do big business here with those fresh eggs. I know I'm looking for a local source for eggs and chickens. And, you know, you're really not much farther away than some of these local farmers......

I'll join the ranks of the depressed... but the funny thing is, I'm realizing that the rain and the cool down really helped my annuals. I can see that they really suffered through the heat of July - especially all those 90+ degree days. I was going to note in my gardening journal, "don't grow nasturiums again". But they look really nice now and are flowering.

It is a strange summer.

Alice

(All's well and good here. :o)

Temperatures dropped overnight Thursday but didn't make it to freezing yesterday morning. Coldest nearby was 36ºF. We didn't have that last wind-driven rain blast just before sundown with one of those deep, quiet, still nights where, if you venture outside at all, you must tie yourself to the handrail on the backsteps so as not to be carried aloft and into the stars of infinite space . . .

Gardening will continue!!

I even collected 3 more Passport melons yesterday morning amidst the fog and heavy dew. I wonder if a Passport melon would get me safely beyond the boundary of the observable biosphere if my tether on the backsteps ever slips on one of these upcoming Autumn nights . . .

An absolute ton of flowers came out of the cutting gardens yesterday. It is as if the plants were ready for a last hurrah despite all the cold . . . Annual Asters, of course, led the way.

digitSteve

Well, no complaints about the weather here. It's been perfect vegetable gardening weather, highs in the low to mid 90's, and lows in the low to mid 50's. The tomatoes are finally starting to show some color, the peppers are putting on a lot of growth, and the cucumbers are going crazy!

The things that make me think the end of summer is near, are seeing the rabbitbrush and wild sunflowers in bloom, and the large number of dead raccoons and skunks on the road this week. Even the breezes have just a touch of coolness in them, that wasn't there before.

... that, and the fall plant catalogs are starting to arrive!

Bonnie

I have lots of green tomatoes but they're slow to ripen. Eggplants are doing well, grapes are ripening, and all my flowers look very happy to have the really high temps gone for now.

I don't think the season is nearly over yet, no, no, no.

During the weeks of temps in the 90s and 100s, I think everything just stopped. They, and I, just sat there and suffered, waiting for it to end. Now I have at least 50 tomatoes developing, but if they need two months to ripen I don't think they'll make it before frost kills them.

My watermelon is finally flowering, but I have doubts about getting watermelon from my garden this year. :-(

At least the zucchini's producing.

I have one month to get my furnace fixed before colder weather starts to arrive, and I don't know how I'm going to do it.

The recent weather was just a nice break from the heat here in Canon City too. Nights are finally back down in the lower 60s... ahhhhh! Should be at least another month before I have to feel the gloom of your original post, digit. Good luck way up there.

Gads I have been so busy I have not made it in for a while...
Lets see in our little area, we had the severe wind warnings on the 27t,,.lake advisories blah blah blah,,they were not what as projected down here in the Flathead valley thats for sure.The last couple of weeks we have had mixed temps 80s down to 50s for highs lows in the 30s and 40s,hail , sideways rain, wind ,, hmmm more wind
Up here in the Flathead we seem to be having our cool weather , we still have a peach tree thats loaded and getting very close to our Peach Party.We had a deer get on the roof garden and eat, of all things the Habenaro peppers.Which is just recuperating and reblooming,no super hots for the man this year.The melons are tiny, thats my fault though got them out to late in the season.This is the second year in a row the veges have been put in late, so next year the plan is hopefully NO magazine or tv peoples during planting season.
M