September 2: A bad summer for trees

I've been seeing a lot of dying trees in the past month. Trees that shouldn't be dying. When I drove up through the river valley with my mom and aunt in mid-August, there were whole ridges of oak trees dead brown leaves. I've never seen that in August, and it doesn't happen all at once unless the tree has died. There are two elm trees in my apartment complex with some serious problems, if they haven't actually expired. And two of the holly trees near my office building are clearly gone. These were 15-foot-tall, healthy holly trees at the beginning of the summer.

All I can think is that they were stressed by the heat and lack of rain, more stressed than our trees have been in recent memory, and they just didn't make it. Maybe in some cases the heat stress made them more susceptible to other diseases.

September 3: A breath of fresh air

From heavy humidity, there came this morning a wind, blew the thick clouds away and carried in cirrus, evaporated the moisture in the air, and cooled things down. It's delicious.