Hey, Mother Nature! It's officially summer now. You can set the thermostat up a few notches.

As I'm writing this on Tuesday of this week, I'm wearing a long-sleeve mock turtleneck shirt with a long-sleeve fleece shirt over it and my hands are still a little chilly.

I don't know about this growing old thing. It seems every year, I feel a little colder. And I went through a period of about 20 years where I was hot all the time. What a change this is, and I'm not liking it one bit. But it is what is, so get used to it and quit whining. Mother Nature doesn't listen, anyway.

Then, when it does warm up to summer temperatures and humidity, we'll probably complain about that, too. All I know is that I have not turned on my air conditioner one time this year. Of course, it's not July yet and, living on the lakeshore, we are the last area to warm up for summer. That big pond to the east, aka Lake Michigan is a great natural air conditioner and we don't have to pay for it to work.

► At this time of the year, a lot of people have gardens and spend a lot of time working them. Here's a funny little story about gardens from 2001 that I found on the internet. It's titled “Working in the Garden.”

A prisoner in jail received a letter from his wife: "I have decided to plant some lettuce in the back garden," she wrote. "When is the best time to plant them?"

The prisoner, knowing that the prison guards read all the mail, replied in a letter, "Dear Wife, whatever you do, DO NOT touch the back garden! That is where I hid all the gold."

A week or so later, he received another letter from his wife that said, "You wouldn't believe what happened. Some men came with shovels to the house and dug up the whole back garden."

The prisoner wrote back, "Dear Wife, NOW is the best time to plant the lettuce.”

And then I found this on the internet, under the title "I'm so old": "I've actually dialed a rotary phone while listening to an eight-track next to a black-and-white TV with aluminum foil on top of its rabbit ear antennas.”

In reality, I could add, “I remember having operators who would answer the phone when you picked it up with the statement, 'Number please?'”

In fact, I was scolded one time by an operator for talking so long to my best friend. Has anyone else ever been scolded by a telephone operator?  I was probably about 12 or 13 at the time, many, many, many years ago.

Have a great week, everyone.

Barb Ludlow is a former Kewaunee County reporter. Email her at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Ludlow: Time to turn up the heat, Mother Nature