Like in the olden days?

So far the summer has been unlike one remembers it used to be – it has been much more everything: hot days when it used to be warm, cool nights instead of balmy ones, stormy when it used to have gentle breezes, a wall of thunder where there used to be a distant rumble and after that a rainbow…

You can’t even count the lightnings!

At Petteri’s place a spruce top broke in the storm and fell exactly on the hammock that fortunately was unoccupied at the moment

And hordes of nasty insects when there used to be – well, hordes of nasty insects; some things never change…

Fortunately, the heat has brought also other kinds of insects that we enjoy seeing:

The dandelions were early but so were also the Swallowtails

A Scarce Fritillary tries to make friends

A Rose Chafer on a Meadow Rue

Almost every morning is dedicated to the watering of the vegetable patch and the greenhouses (the flowers may manage as best they can). With enough water and heat (= relentless sunshine) the plants tend to be ahead of their normal schedule (we were behind the normal when sowing/planting them). Thus we already have cucumbers and gherkins galore

Malakhitovaya Shkatulka (Malachite Box) has already developed several good-sized fruit

The first spaghetti squash fruit are setting

and even the fussy climbing beans are flowering

It sounds almost enviable, doesn’t it (after all, hammocks are pretty cheap and the longest power break here was only 12 hours)? Actually, it’s unsettling. Even if not minding that it has been impossible to plant the Brassicas that wouldn’t survive for a single day the round-the-clock sunglare it’s exhausting to have simultaneously the official warnings for temperature (+33), thunderstorms and forest fires to keep count of and survive with.

Well, not much we can do about it – except to go to the lake and see what is there as always at this time:

Or maybe to walk to the meadow nearby and when returning home be able to say, “Yes, they are there and ripe.”

Like in the olden days.