The Sun Will Come Out...Today!

After months of gray, foggy and rather depressing weather out here in the gulch, the sun has finally come out for more than 5 minutes...in one stretch!  We have actually had several, maybe even 5 or so, sunny and warm days.  So let me put it in perspective.  Our regular "summer" (June, July, August) weather is cold and misty.  This is good for our crops (lettuce and brasicas) and generally reflects (I think) healthy and expected weather patterns.  That's the catch-22: I wish it was sunny and warm because it's glorious and energetic but that would actually be asking for something that's not good.  So instead I try my best to deal with the seasonal affective disorder- like symptoms and wait patiently for the fall and it's summery weather.

Here's some gulch highlights.

• Flocks of teenage quails roaming about, sounding their hilarious distress signals and generally freaking out, when they're not taking dust baths or running away from you like repelling magnets of course.
• We have two late arriving baby ducks with their mum hanging out in our algae filled irrigation pond.  They are teens by now and it seems mom is confident in what she has taught them enough to leave them on their own sometimes.  They learned to groom, to dunk under water with their butts in the air and sleep on the floaties.  
• The bees are having a ball.  First the large bees come around and now it's the smaller honey bees.  You walk by a bush and it just looks like a bush, but it's full of buzzing!  
• You know what else is great about the fog lifting?  When there's no cloud cover I can hear the ocean again from my bedroom window.  Ahhh, it's like one of those sound machines but better, and free.
• We have been hearing crowds of coyotes howling, yelping, barking.  It's amazing.  Sometimes when the whole community is doing farm work on Wednesday mornings it sounds like a stadium of fans cheering us on. Very encouraging.
• This season it seems "distemper" is back again.  It generally affects dogs but also wild animals like foxes, raccoons, etc.  We have found two dead foxes which is very sad.  I will admit I am not sure the garden will be that sad if it kills off some raccoons because they ransack our apple trees every year. 
• Snapdragons are blooming, actually they're at the end of their cycle but it's been glorious.