"Only Sunshine/ NO Rain"?

Well our predicted 7 day stretch of 'only sunshine/ no rain' didn't last long; 2 days was about all. We had a thunder storm and showers both Saturday night and Sunday night.

Yesterday we spent a hot and sunny +29C day in Calgary watching the finishing ceremonies of the 2010  60 km Walk for Women's Cancers at Currie Barracks.  We were very proud watching our daughter and son-in-law and their neighbor as they approached the end of their 60 km walk! We are so proud of them and all the other selfless participants and volunteers!  They spent countless hours raising funds and awareness of women's cancers in Alberta. Their team alone raised $8000 and the 1114 walkers there raised a total of 2.7 MILLION dollars for cancer research!

As we drove towards home last night we encountered quite a light show sponsored by Mother Nature! Some of the bolts of lightning were quite spectacular! Rain poured down, starting and stopping several times during the 250 km trip, but we discovered there had only been a small amount here at home. Later that night more rain arrived to soak everything even further.

My flower pots are down right soggy! Many of the plants that I put in over the last 3 years have been the drought tolerant type because our typical summer usually involves very little rain! Not this summer! the Farmers' Almanac was right in its predictions for the summer of 2010: Wetter than normal on the prairies and hotter than normal in the east. (The Farmers' Almanac have an 80% accuracy rate, according to them. I don't even want to THINK about what kind of winter they forecast for us!)

It cleared up around noon and continues to be sunny now with a temperature of about 19 C.
What's the forecast for this week? Well, that depends on which weather site you check. One says rain showers on Wed, Saturday and Sunday, but the other mentions only sun or partly cloudy, no showers, except next Monday.  Talk about contradictory! I'm just going to think positive and try to enjoy the sunny days when we get them!

I am so pleased with how my garden looks right now!
Vegetable garden:
The tomato plants have grown huge with all this rain! They have loads of blossoms on them, although they need more sun to help them bear fruit. The cherry tomatoes in the pot on the deck has lots of little tomatoes on it, albeit all still green. (Hmm! Fried green tomatoes!  :)

The Swiss chard is huge and lush. I cut some leaves off to have for supper tonight. Much of the spinach has gone to seed, but I harvested a bunch of leaves to feed to my tropical fish and to make into a salad for us. The bean plants are coming along okay but probably could do with a big blast of sunshine, too. No sign of any 'beanlets' yet!

The potatoes look great, and we're looking forward to trying them, baby potatoes with butter and dill! Yum! They are all red potatoes. We prefer them to white, which are more starchy.

There's still plenty of rhubarb on my 3 plants so I cut a dozen stems to chop up and freeze. It's nice to have the rhubarb in the winter for a pie  or some squares. ( Also I have a good rhubarb cake recipe!)

The dill is still very tiny. I think I should have put it in a sunnier spot. Maybe next year- put in in a pot on the deck!
The zucchini are growing, and have a few blossoms now,  but the plants are quite small compared with the usual for this time of year.

I transplanted the 2 small black Krim tomato plants (which I had started from seed) into bigger pots on the deck.  They used to be so tiny and have grown well, and they might not produce that much, depending on the sun we get in August.

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