Foggy Night

Just before tonight's sunset a thick fog began rolling across the pastures behind us. By the time I put my card back in my camera and headed outside it was already creeping over our backyard.

I have always associated fog with coastal states. I just assumed that if you didn't have an oceanic coastline within a hundred miles that you didn't get fog. One of the few things I ever missed about living in California was waking up to foggy mornings. When we moved here, the fog was a big surprise to me. Yet these are the mountains, full of ponds, rivers, and streams, as well as three large lakes within 30 or so miles of our house. So when the temperature conditions are right, fog begins rolling off those bodies of water and creeping across the land. I love it. It is quiet, peaceful. The cool moisture feels good on my skin. And it is just so cool to see develop.

It is hard to gauge how thick it was by just looking at this shot, but that grass is four feet high. That tree on the right looks like a naked chubby Christmas tree, but it is taller than my two-story house. This fog was getting pretty tall. When I left an hour or so later to get the boys from scouts, it had covered everything, and the moon you can see here had that cool glow around it that fog provides.

Some of my plants in my garden have taken advantage of the lack of time we have had. Since we haven't had a chance to plow the garden bed under, it has overgrown with grass. However, tonight I found three new broccoli plants, a couple of huge eggplant vines, a yellow squash vine, a cucumber vine, and two cherry tomato plants all growing strong. I may get a whole new harvest in if the frost holds off a bit. You know, we spent a lot of time planting the garden and trying to tend to it properly, just to have 3/4 of my crop eaten by grasshoppers and several of my plants never produced at all. Now that I have neglected the garden area... haven't weeded, watered,or even noticed it... I have stuff flowering all over it. I really have to improve my gardening skills next year, unless growing a bunch of late-season veggies in a field of neglected weeds is considered a good kind of skill!