Could it be? Summer...finally here?

This post will seem to have a few random things to it but they are all tied together by "summer".

The weather has been so crazy, up and down, here that it has made me wonder if summer would EVER come. A couple of weeks ago it got up into the upper 80's making me think, finally our long winter and extremely short spring had finally morphed into the summer season, but then last weekend it had cooled way off. There were a couple of days that our heat even kicked on. Sunday, the 21st, was the offical First Day of Summer but then it was cold enough that we needed heat...huh? Yesterday and today though have finally warmed up again but is it here to stay? I hear that this summer is supposed to be a hot one though (joy for us that don't have air conditioning) so I'm not looking forward to those REALLY hot days.

Our hummingbirds are going to eat us out of house and home this summer...or at least our sugar containers...maybe I should look into buying a 25 lb bag of it for this year. Back at the beggining of May we started to pull out all the summer furniture for our patio but we forgot about getting the hummingbird feeders out until I had the front door open one day and I could hear them out there chirping away. I immediately got their food boiled and started out with making 6 cups, that was quickly consumed. So then I increased it to making 12 cups every time I'd make it. About 2 weeks ago, they slowed down their consumption and I remembered from reading this would happen because they were tending to their nests & eggs but they would be back and to keep the feeders filled. Well sure enough last week we started seeing more and more and MORE of them. I filled up the feeders (we have 3 out that hold a cup each) last Thursday...by Sunday they were empty. We filled them again and by Monday 2 were empty. So I decided to made 20 cups of food (that is 5 cups of sugar) hoping I wouldn't have to make anymore for a couple of weeks, however, I'm not sure how long it will last because NOW I'm filling them up every other day. I think we may be the only house in our neighborhood that has feeders out. My step-mom had a point though when I mentioned that I was worried about going anywhere because I wouldn't be able to fill them and they would leave...she said, they'll come back, they will just feed off of nectar from the flowers around here instead of doing it the easy way, off my feeders. I didn't think of that and it also made me realize that I wonder if our feeders are being hit so hard because our honeysuckle didn't come back this year that we planted 2 years ago.....think?

All of our strawberries have been ripening too so I've been out picking them a couple of times a week...and we have strawberries galore. We have a little strawberry patch out back that is 30 inches wide and about 2 yards long (that my husband and his ex-wife started 11 years ago and started with 25 plants - but has grown to hundreds of plants now). When I first moved up here just after getting married, Scott was showing me everything and mentioned the strawberry patch and that we'd have to be out to pick strawberried every night. (Even as a brand new newlywed) I said, "WHAT....I'm sorry, I'm not spending every night out here picking strawberries"...gardening is not my thing and I could think of SOOO many other things to do with my time than picking strawberries every night of the summer.....but he failed to mention they were June bearing strawberries only, not ever-bearing. Makes it a little easier to take on but I'm still not out there every night picking.

We are hoping to go camping at some point in time this year too, if the gas doesn't get to astronomical prices like it was last year. But so far we haven't had any luck. Last weekend when we wanted to go, the weather was stinky so we stayed home. Hopefully the weekend of the 4th will be better.

I'm hoping everyone will get to enjoy their summer doing something you love to do.