Overwhelming Dampness

I'm back from my three day excursion to the Upper Peninsula (MI) with my younger daughter. We had some rain but enjoyed Sable Falls above and Tequamenon Lower and Upper Falls below. In terms of scale, that section of the Lower Falls drops 12' or so but the Upper Falls drop 50' and are the largest falls in Michigan. Amazing how progressed the season is up there with leaves starting to turn color and many late perennials in bloom. Latitude is a factor!!! One night got down to 37 degrees F.
While we had one day of rain up nort' der, it was consistent rain thru the week at Rotary Gardens with close to 4" of precipitation after today's sprinkles and the previous three days. The gardens are saturated but we were able to mow this afternoon and tidy up the wedding garden areas. Marianne, Janice, Terry, Jerry and I all did some work inside and outside when the weather allowed it. Dr. Gredler mowed later in the day and we saw Shirley come in to check labels in the gazebo garden. Urban, Bev and Dr. Yahr all stopped in as well. Should be a nice weekend although I think there might be more rain on the way. Many of our annuals are starting to wane (particularly petunias) so we're pulling out "undesireables" as we see them. We should still have good color thru September regardless of the increasing number of gaps. Nice heirloom tomato slices below as photographed by Mari Ann, one of our Master Gardener volunteers. The bad news is that we're seeing some symptoms on our collection that may indicate severe late blight, now prevelant in our County and not totally unexpected. Diagnosis to come soon but this blight could ruin our entire tomato collection and modify some preparations for GardenFest coming up in September. Nice north woods shot at the bottom. Pines destined to be telephone poles....