Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

With sadness I must report there will be no summer edition. After a series of snarls and snafus it ended up on the back burner and never got written. And then the season peetered out sometime in August with no more 90 degree days and even 80 degree ones have been a bit hard to come by and we’ll be lucky to see any more of those in the coming weeks. Especially with the first day of September feeling more like October as what is left of tropical storm Harvey approaches.

Global warming; I really miss you now!

This feels unusual. Normally it gets very warm ahead of a hurricane or tropical storm. The air feels - well- tropical like; with the storm is pushing the warm moist air northward and then after it passes you get the cool Canadian air coming down behind it.

Not so with this system. It went from halfway decently warm after we had just recovered from a bout of chilly nights earlier in the week to this on Friday. A chilly overcast day in the 60s that took a lot of motivation to get myself up and out the door to take care of personal business on a day I had off. It was a good thing I fed the turtles the day before- because on Friday they were for the most part quiescent. That’s my favored term for describing their torpid state in chilly weather that is near hibernation. September usually is the last month for feeding before they shut down and go totally off feed. Another sad milestone though in a way it does give me a break and is a reset for a another season as this one is pretty much used up and will soon be coming to an end.

Where the heck did it all go?

Summer seemed to take forever to get here and now it is gone. Bruce the Historian noted it was a cool wet one last night when I stopped by to deliver some eggs and caught him at a rather bad time packing for his annual trip to the Eastern Shore. And it was downright uncomfortable the short time we chatted on his porch up on the ridge with the brisk winds blowing. We talked about getting firewood and coal for our furnaces and I already had propane delivered that evening for the greenhouse and next on the agenda is some oil to put in the tank for the inside furnace to make sure I don’t run out and have to prime and bleed the line again!

Saturday is another chilly morning in the house as I tough it out as long as I can before burning anything until I absolutely have to in order to save on fuel expenses. The rains from Harvey originally projected to come around 3 AM have yet to arrive. I will welcome those because in spite of it being a wetter summer than last year ; the spring run I use to top off the ponds remains just a trickle more or less.

That will change as we move deeper onto autumn and the trees start loosing their leaves and their appetite for water. Then the flow will pick up a little even if we don’t get much out of this coming tropical remnant or other storm systems that pass through in the meantime.

Evapotranspiration is a surprisingly powerful thing!

And speaking of natural forces; there is no telling what this coming winter will bring. Not sure if we’ll be so lucky to have a repeat of the previous mild one that was even downright pleasant at times with 70 degree days and lots of winter flowers. Ray has been sending me some weather predictions along with his usual gripes from Wisconsin; often the bel weather of things to come out of the gates of Arctic Hell.

Disturbing to say the least. And I do recall hearing geese a bit earlier than usual. Weeks ago as a matter of fact. Something wicked this way come? Maybe. Only time will tell.

As of my dinner break around 4:30 PM it looks as if we are going to get some of what is left of Tropical storm Harvey.

Hoping maybe I’ll wake up to a sight like this tomorrow morning but it may not amount to as much as earlier predictions of an inch or more. Weather is hard to predict accurately- especially in the short term. The physical world just has too many variables to model on paper or virtual reality.

As for Texas- if they are not getting washed away when they are drying up and blowing away. At least it was not the end of the world for them despite all the wishes vaguely disguised as fears. It’s serious business for them and they got their act together much better than New Orleans with Katrina. It also looks as if the federal government is at least doing a better job too. They may have learned a few lessons since and the people themselves seem to be learning that the government cannot do everything and it is incumbent on everyone to be prepared so they can survive the initial hit in a catastrophe. If this thinking becomes more widespread it will make the nation far more resilient than it is now.

Private charities are already organizing to send aid.