Ill winds blow good

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

The funny thing about weather is people usually only complain about it—even when it’s nice. (What do they say? Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it? OK, nobody but Jerry E. Smith, but that joke’s probably too inside for most readers.)

Well, I’m here to offer a ray of sunshine in an otherwise dreary weather outlook. Man, can anyone ever remember an early August as temperate and beautiful as this one? I sometimes sit on the front porch in the evenings watching the hummingbirds defend their ownership of the hummingbird feeder and the comings and goings of neighbors and shortcutters down my rutted street in southwest Reno. I’m convinced that the Caughlin Ranch and Angora fires are to blame for the massive increase in hummingbird populations. I guess I should count myself lucky that so many of the little hummers were displaced by the fires.

This weather reminds me of our all-too-occasional October Indian summers, I guess just because it’s a cool period following a really hot spell. I labor under no illusions that it’s going to last. In fact, I’ll be surprised if it’s not too freaking hot to sleep again by the time this paper hits the streets. I, unlike some of my esteemed colleagues, don’t have air conditioning in my house, so when it’s hot out, well, it’s hot in.

Did this drop in temperatures send anyone else’s gardens into suddenly ripening mode? I’m not sure if it was the cool or a watering distraction on my part, but my onion tops fell over like toy soldiers under firecracker attack, and a bunch of peppers went from green to red overnight. I expect to see string beans any day now. Sad. I never would have thought about summer ending if it weren’t time for the Back to School and Join the Pack issues. Seems like summer has hardly just begun.