Here in New England, we slogged through a very wet July 2021—the second wettest on record. It rained often and usually for hours, if not days, on end.
The Soggy Garden
The garden’s sun-loving, heat-savoring tomatoes huddled down and put their energy into surviving. Zucchini took a long time to produce a fruit, although that may be because the bunnies ate the flowers until the plants grew too big for them to get in close.
Instead of watering my plants, I went out and tipped water from saucers and cache pots before the poor things drowned. The rain didn’t stop me from going in the pool, though. Unless it was pouring, which is really unpleasant, wet is wet.
I led several tours for Haunted Boston through a soggy, sloshy city, two of them in the rain. Water sluiced down streets, gushed from downspouts, ran in rivers down sidewalks and huddled in puddles. They were dark and stormy nights and the tours were a challenge but we all made it through.
Grateful for the Rain
While folks here griped about the weather, I was grateful that we weren’t sweltering under a heat dome, losing our homes to wildfires, suffering brownouts, or breathing smoke and ash. The smoke did, and still sometimes does, dim the skies but that is nothing by comparison.
Plus, our reservoirs, streams, lakes, cisterns, and ponds are now full. This is not a small thing.
Roundup of July 2021 Posts
The inclement weather proved a boon for writing. After all, if you can’t go to the beach or hiking or on a picnic, you can always write. So, write we did. Suze and I covered our usual range of topics for July 2021.
If you’re in one of the world’s hot spots, find a cool place and catch up with our musings.
Boston and History
- The Buildings of Piano Row: Part 1 — Aline
- Piano Row Buildings: Part 2 — Aline
- The Buildings of Piano Row: Part 3 and Steinert Hall — Aline
Business and Technology
- Phishing: Don’t Take the Bait — Susanne
Food and Cooking
- Food for Thought: Spice It Up — Susanne
Friends and Family
- A Surviving Spouse Checklist — Susanne
Health and Safety
- You Can’t Fix Stupid – Aline
- Normalizing Obesity: American Girth — Aline
- Witnessing a Motorcycle Accident — Aline
Spiritual
- The Compare and Despair Trap — Susanne
Looking Forward to Traveling
Marksburg Castle
Susanne is on vacation this month but she still supplied some posts. If you miss her usual Monday blog post, it’s because she’s gone fishin’. I’m jealous. I would love to go somewhere, ANYWHERE!
We don’t own a summer house we can retreat to and we gave up our Marriott Vacation Club ownership because it no longer worked for us. That pretty much canceled the easy options.
The combination of a more-contagious Delta Variant and stubborn vaccine resistance means the pandemic isn’t going away anytime soon. We’re fully vaccinated and live in a state with only a 2.2% positivity rate but that’s still two points higher than it used to be.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed for travel by April of 2022. We’re 251 days away from the trip that was supposed to happen in 2020, then in 2021. That’s a long time between trips.
