My apples are falling off and I don’t know why. It seems to be another manifestation of this weird weather year. Normally it is about time for the first of the Asian pears to ripen, and three weeks after that the apples start to come in. But for the past month they have been dropping off the tree. About two-thirds of my crop is rotting on the ground. They look red and fully ripe, but if you bite into one it is still tart and undeveloped. They are all smaller than normal too. I think they are reacting to our hot summer the way I would in their position—it’s too hard to hold on, I’ll just fall off and die now.
It has been a strange year all around for the garden. Everything bloomed weeks before normal. Perhaps it’s a new climate regime, and this is what it will be like from now on. The winter was sunny and dry, with the lowest snowpack in recorded history. Then the spring was cool and wet, which is why I think my plum tree has no fruit this year. There was nothing flying around to pollinate the flowers at the crucial time. A friend’s peach tree shows the same problem. Since June it's been a brutal summer of mid 80’s to lower 90’s and unrelenting sun. I know I’m not getting any sympathy from you there on the East Coast, but hey, we don’t do air conditioning out here. Our climate is perfect without it. Or, it used to be.
I remember a time when our summers were cool and comfortable. An 80 degree day was a rarity. Summer would arrive about 3 in the afternoon when the marine clouds burned off. This year has been a season of unmitigated sun and heat, and the garden blooms have been several weeks advanced the entire season. It’s as if we shifted south by several hundred miles, and we now have the climate of Oregon.
Today was a blessed break in the weather. The onshore flow pushed the blanket of clouds to the Cascades, and I went for a 25 mile bike ride in pleasant low 60’s damp air. Tomorrow it gets better—it’s supposed to rain. This is why I live here. For the cloud layer.
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