The Coldest Summer I Ever Spent

There are rumors that it's going to get up to eighty degrees this weekend here in Portland, and I'll believe it when I see it.  The past weeks don't bode well, that's for sure.  Here it is, mid-June, and the other night I had to turn on the heater!  Rain, fog, and wind like you would not believe are blustering over our town, and I am sick to death of it.  The weather page in our local paper at least is having a sense of humor about it.  One of their headlines on Tuesday read, "Merry Christmas!  At least that's what it felt like in La Grande."  

I was getting a bit worried for my vegetable garden-- is it getting enough sun?  Too much water?  Too cold?  So I decided to do a little investigative reporting, and I called up Terry at Kasch's Nursery on Tacoma St. to see what she had to say.  A short, blond woman with a deep, husky voice, Adam and I have seen her the last two springs that we visited Kasch's to pick up our tomato starts and flower seeds.  She's always charging around, watering plants and just generally getting stuff done.

I was hoping she would answer the phone, and she did.  The hook I was looking for didn't really pan out, though.  Apparently, plants are doing just fine in this weather.  For the most part, at least.  Terri told me genially that some people who started planting their spring veggie plots really early had to come back and replace some of their plants.  But for those of us who procrastinated till late May, or early June (or haven't even really started yet), there should be no problem.

I could see the truth of her words in my own plot, but I had just been chalking that up to the compost bin that Adam made last winter and which we positioned right in the corner of the plot so it would, we hoped, leach nutrients to its green, growing neighbors.  We've got tomatoes, corn, beans, lettuce, basil, cilantro, an eggplant, and a zucchini going strong, and the only thing that didn't seem to take was the okra (which, truth be told, was just fine by me).

Well, I guess I don't need to worry about waking up one wet morning to a plot full of dead veggies.  I suppose the little guys don't mind the rain nearly as much as I do.