Moody Mother Nature

Mother Nature has been very unpredictable and cantankerous this spring to put it mildly. At the beginning of the week the weather was glorious and sunny, although very hot and dry for May. The temperature here at the lake was 21C one day, then 24C the next, then it rose to 27C the following day and finally 33C for 2 days after that!
OMG!  Does this portray shades of things to come? Are we in for a hot dry summer, I thought.

New batches of mosquitos were buzzing around, making their unpleasant presence known and generally making life miserable, (unless you were a Tree Swallow in which case they made a delicious feast!) These mosquitos are a bit smaller than the usual ones but they are more brazen and hardy, it seems. They will come out even in the hot sun at noon to attack and wreak havoc! Their bites swell up and are itchy for days thereafter. Thank goodness for products like SSSting Stop! It certainly made my life more bearable under the circumstances.

Then the clouds rolled in and the wind whipped up and the weather turned ugly overnight. The rainstorm began in earnest with the wind driving the rain almost horizontal against the house! The temperature dropped to zero overnight.   Unfortunately I had planted out my 3 dahlias and 2 canna lilies, which I had started from tubers in late March, in my flower beds a few days previous...
My poor plants, I thought! So I went outside, braving the ugly wind and rain, to cover them and my 3 little cosmos plants up with sheets and old towels to protect them.  One of the dahlias still got a touch of frost at the top that night though right through the towel!

My husband I carried the trays of bedding plants (which were sitting on the picnic table and on the deck waiting to be planted) up against the house under the deck roof and some of the more delicate ones went right into the house. Now it looks like a mini garden inside the front door with a 'hodgepodge' of lacey tomato plants, squat spaghetti squashes, regal geraniums, blue convolvulous vines and yellow blossomed green lysemachia.

I'm itching to get these plants all planted out in their designated spots and have done so many times over in my mind already....  I'm looking forward to it with great anticipation! Maybe tomorrow...

In the meantime, I have been attacking the dandelions again, not that you would notice a huge decrease as your eyes scan the yard. If fact, can it be possible that there are even more dandelions daring to bloom today than there were before I even started digging them up???  Must be an optical illusion of some kind, I tell myself consolingly....