I’m sorry, folks, but this has, for many reasons, been a summer to forget for most of us who enjoy the outdoors. The primary culprits have been the incessant rains and abnormally low high temperatures throughout June and July. It seemed for many of us that much of our free time has been spent mowing grass that continually grew at a rate that is more associated with early spring, when mowing is necessary every three or four days.

From the too-much-of-a-good-thing department, vegetable gardeners struggled (mostly unsuccessfully) to save their tomato plants from the blight brought on by too much rain and too few warm sunny days. Farmers had to harvest what has been a bumper hay crop by hurrying to do it in between those overly abundant rainy days. This year it seems that those modest April showers brought more than May flowers …they started a wet, cool cycle that has continued for months. In fact, we had more typical summer day conditions in late April, but few after that. And this year it seemed as though April and May switched places, weather-wise.