Thursday was the first day of summer – in my mind that is. As I was sitting on the sunny lawn having a picnic with my family, I felt the sting. And then the itch. It was a blood filled mosquito, filling up that thin red body with my blood.

I hate mosquitoes.

But I do love summer! And an early summer is even better!

Around the 1st of May, it was nice enough that Bob made the wonderful decision to plant potatoes. We figured, if the ground was unfrozen then the potatoes won’t freeze. Simple. They wouldn’t grow quick enough for the greens to come out and have the plant be ruined if we still had a frost coming.

Every year we get VERY excited to plant. We start seed way too early, get burnt out on doing the shuffle, and just have bad predictions of weather. We lose a good amount of plants every year because we think they are safe from the frost and then….poof….what do you know? We get a frost and it kills our plants. We’ve lost all our cucumbers before…squash, flowers …..you name it, we’ve probably killed it.

Except this year. I think it is finally safe to say that we haven’t lost a single plant to frost this year.

Not only have we not lost any plants to frosts but we have potatoes coming up. We have peas and beans coming up. Not to mention the Spicy Salad mix is ready to eat (we had some for dinner with halibut on top).

We are trying not to dwell in the fact we did not get bees this year – for the first time in 6 years (this warm start may have been the perfect conditions to get them established). However, I have already started pollinating the apple and pear trees myself.

So far, we are ahead of our schedule and I’m thankful for a longer “summer”