Summer (what summer?) round-up

So, what happened to the summer?

I’d quite like to know too, actually.

Firstly, there was rain, cold, damp, more rain, more chill, and a little drizzle on the side. Sunshine, there was…, well, very little. We had the coldest (though not quite the wettest) summer for 18 years in fact. It got tedious, very fast. And continued to be tedious, for a long time. I finally gave up, and put away my summer clothes, the majority of them unworn. As in, not even once, all season. To give an indication, it was rarely even warm enough to wear my wool t-shirt with just-above-the-elbow-length sleeves. Yeah, really. And I wore my sandals at most once every two or three weeks, so my wool socks didn’t get a seasonal break, either. Is that good news, or bad? Wales: land of happy handknits.

Secondly, there was KnitNation, and the fiendish Finnish mitten class. Fun, and not so fiendish after all – remind me to tell you about it. There was attendant showing-off of a fabulously brag-worthy colorwork cardi (steeks! Vikkel braids!), and a subsequent non-colorfastness tragedy I haven’t fully recovered from.

There was a week in Portugal, to provide us with enough vitamin D to survive another year of grey and grim (and surely, shouldn’t we be getting this on the National Health at this point?); various business-y forays to exotic parts by the Beloved (who still hasn’t learned that all would be so much better if he returned with WOOL) and juggling of damp, cooped-up kids by the base-camp party…

And yet, at the end of the ‘summer’ there was one great surprise. Despite the poor weather, and signal absence of sunshine: a benediction of plums in the neighbor’s garden (I was cat- and plum-tree sitting, and have jam and plum brandy to prove it), and, from the organic farmer at the farmers’ market, a glut of the best cherry, and heirloom tomatoes I’ve ever tasted.  We’ve had a 3kg tray every week for a month, and aren’t anywhere near sick of them yet. In fact, every week, we chow through them faster than the week before. I actually had to come over all sneaky and rationing to save a few last ones to roast this evening, because – ye gods – very slowly roasted tomatoes turn out to be wonderful beyond measure and I can’t believe I never knew that before.

They, at least, have been perfect, and look – it even says so on the box.

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