Posted by: @stargazer

The sky is a sort of milky color by day, with an orange sun; by night the Moon is dimmed and most of the stars are washed out. ....

The sun is setting about 25 minutes earlier than it did at the June solstice, and we've lost even more daylight in the morning. ....

 

But at night the crickets are singing more loudly and constantly, a sign I recognize as heralding the change to fall.

Yes! The past few days, the morning lighting, in particular, has been very strange with the wildfire smoke. It quite reminded us of partial eclipse lighting. Eerie in some ways.

Here, too, we are really noticing the change in daytime length, heralding the shorter days/ longer nights to come!  

And the crickets, are they loud! What a pretty sound. We often have a few that somehow make their way into our basement (which we try to catch to release outside) ... what a pretty 'noise'.

Well, we are currently having our typical July weather now in August. We are in the midst of a long hot, humid, dry spell of approx. two - three weeks duration. The only thing to do is to grin and bear it. And pace oneself, drinking lots of water and eating the abundant of fresh fruit and berries available so readily at this time of year. 

Our harvest has begun in our own veggie gardens, with abundant beans (mainly green, but some yellow too), cherry tomatoes, and garlic (just harvested yesterday). In July, 'though hot, we had rain periodically, which made the gardens lush and flourishing. Now, we are reaping (literally) the benefits of this. However, these two weeks in August now, we are needing to manually water the many gardens, as nothing significant will be falling from the sky anytime soon. 

Come, September/Autumn, come!    

We finally had our first 100F+ days last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Today is back down into the low 80Fs thanks to a cool front that came through, so I'm very much enjoying this summer. I wish the rest of the world could as well. 

Posted by: @fantasia

so I'm very much enjoying this summer. I wish the rest of the world could as well. 

Not in the southern hemisphere, please! I'm not there now, but I was there in February (visiting my family in Australia), and I can assure you we've already had our summer there and don't need another one, thank you all the same.  

@fantasia our summer has been surprisingly mild down here as well. We've hit 100 a handful of times, but it's not sustained over weeks at a time. We're down to about 8 weeks down here before the days are too short to maintain the heat for longer than a couple of hours.

Posted by: @fantasia

I'm very much enjoying this summer.

Glad to hear it! That was my sentiment all last summer, 2024: cooler, frequent rainfall, not blazing sun every single day. But it is the opposite this year. I think I may have said earlier that even people who love the heat are finding this extensive hot, very dry heat wave way too much.   And there is little relief at nights. A hot, sticky, muggy weather pattern has settled in.

We have had rain since I cannot remember when (mid-late July sometime), and none of significance in the next couple of weeks, at least. This is extremely unusual for us in August. Certainly more like our typical July weather.  

Tomorrow the heat warning should lift for Thursday and Friday (hot, but no humidity), then a warning will be back in effect for the weekend. The heat affects me so very much that I cannot even attend an extended family gathering this weekend.  

The farmers' fields really, really need rain, as do people's gardens, but the former is of necessity, while the latter, 'though disappointing, is not crucial. 

There are wild fires in Ontario further south than they have been in years, about 2 & 1/2 hours NE of us in the beautiful Kawartha Lakes area.

EDIT later today: the sky grew dark this afternoon, with warnings of potentially severe thunderstorms rolling through. Alas, just to the west of us got it, then the system veered north of us, then east again. It totally missed our village, even though I heard some lovely rumblings of thunder around. So, still no rain.