*Content note: discussion of spiders (no pictures)*
In which we discuss the weather
Overnight, it's becoming autumn here. This happens fairly reliably around the March Equinox, something for which I'm eternally grateful.
Summer here is hard. Even in a mild one, like the last two have been, the heat drags on you and makes it hard to keep on top of things. This is unfortunate, given that summer is also when the garden needs the most attention if it's going to stay alive. A single day of missed watering can easily kill off half the potted vegetables, if the north wind is blowing in off the desert. And the only thing that gets you out into the yard on the *really* hot days is the need to keep the chickens cool and well watered.
Summer *drags*. By the end of February you're certain it's never going to end. You'll be stuck sweating through your sheets at night and lying on the floor in the breezeway in the afternoon forever. You suck down gallons of water and curse the tiny eaves that let the mid-afternoon sun slide through the windows months before you want its warmth. You curse the weather service for promising low thirties (Celsius, my US friends) at the start of the week, only to revise it up, and up, and *up* as the days drag on.
And then comes the Equinox. Even when the daytime temperatures are still frying eggs on the concrete, the mornings start to smell like a promise of frost under the shade of the trees. The winds start to bend, coming off the Antarctic instead of the desert, and though you can't smell the penguin shit in it yet, you know you will soon.
And the garden? The garden goes fucking apeshit.
