The Sun Sets on Another Summer

If you're a regular reader of Road Tips, you'll know that I get very melancholy when Sept. 1 rolls around.  Although summer isn't officially over until Sept. 22 this year, I like to follow the meteorological calendar that states summer is over on Aug. 31 and autumn begins today. 

It's been a while since the sun's rays have appeared in our north windows.  We've had our annual August cool down with Canadian high pressure systems sitting over Eastern Iowa and Western Illinois.  The low temps were in the lower 40's the past couple of nights.  While some people think of fall as their most favorite time of the year, I look forward to fall as just another step toward winter. 

This summer went exceptionally fast this year.  After we got back from our trip to Savannah, I was released to travel for work by my doctor (although I'd already made an overnight trip to Madison before).  Since then, it's been non-stop.  I was on the road every week with the exception of last week.  Hotel rooms began to close in on me.  I was dreading getting in the car for another four hour trip to somewhere.  I had seen a number of dealers, but I still haven't been able to make it up to Minnesota, the Dakotas, Nebraska and Northern Iowa.  I was damn busy.  And the time just flew.  It can't be that it's now over three months since we were in Savannah.  Seems like we were there just last month.

This year, summer didn't really feel like summer at times.  We hardly ran our air-conditioner in June and into July.  We had a few warm and steamy days in mid-August, but we really haven't had to turn on the AC for the last few days.  We set records in both July and August for days with the coolest high temperatures - about five or six days broke records for the lowest maximum temperatures this summer.  

And the rain - wow!  For some reason, we've got dumped on at our house this summer.  We've had rains of over 3 inches a couple times - including just last week - and up to about 2.5 inches on two or three other occasions.  Then we've had the spotty rains that add another half-inch to the saturated ground.  While we haven't had the flooding that inundated parts of Iowa last summer, we've had a lot of rain add up.  Our sump pump has been going non-stop since March.  Where the water empties out into our yard, I have a perpetual swamp.

Offiicially, this was the 8th wettest month of August on record in the Quad Cities.  The National Weather Service recorded just over 8 inches of rain for the month.  In our rain gauge, however, we had nearly a foot of rain for the month.   Like I say, it poured on us a lot this last month.  Total rainfall - June, July and August - was officially right at 21 inches in the Quad Cities.  I know we got much more than that in our rain gauge the last three months. 

Coupled with the cool temperatures and the wet conditions, our rose garden didn't flourish as well as expected this year.  We'd gotten a leaf blight that caused some of the bushes to lose the majority of their leaves.  We found this was a direct result of too much water.  This is the first year we've never had to water any of our rose bushes or any of our annual plants that are planted in the ground.  We've given our vegetable garden, potted plants and window boxes a splash of water when it was needed, but that's it.  We just got our water bill last week and it was down exactly 1/3 from the same time period in 2008.  And that's good because we just had a pretty substantial rate hike go into effect in early August.

Cindy and I just went into Chicago for a long weekend as our "last hurrah" for summer.  We've always said that we wanted to go into Chicago and hang out downtown in the summer, as we've done it many times in the winter.  It was fun and relaxing, even though the temps were cool throughout the weekend.  Chicago is such a great city.

The only saving grace about fall starting up is that college football begins this week.  While I'm a big college football fan, I also dread the first game of the season.  It means cold temperatures are not that far away.

Comments

[Shelley]

Will...If you were a Gator fan, you would not have to worry about cool temps until (dare I say it)...bowl time! Love, Shelley