I want some coffee!

I'm not sure I qualify for using this not-very-kind title. I was not the top of my class in anything science or arts related, but I do enjoy techie subjects. These days my tech efforts are limited to too much detail about roasting coffee. In the past that also included brewing coffee. Over the last couple years I've accepted that I keep doing things the same way cuz I like what I'm tasting and I don't want to change anything. The Admiral's tolerance for this 'same-ness' has proven to be remarkable! For perhaps the last 2 years I have been buying green (unroasted) beans - what we coffee nerds call 'greens' - from Coffee Bean Corral in Jackson, Mississippi . These organic (!) greens are sourced from the state of Chiapas in Mexico. Chiapas is the most southern state in Mexico and it is also (at upper elevations) a coffee growing region. I gave it a try a few years ago and decided it was good enough I didn't care to keep experimenting to find somethi...

 ... but no follow through!   We seem to be getting a lot of this: what looks like the promise of some moisture but no follow-through. This is a shot roughly Southwest from our site. The 'threatening' clouds seemed to promise moisture but no joy! And 'moisture'? A phrase I picked up from relatives who were cattle ranchers in Wyoming. Al Smith insisted they didn't get 'rain', they got 'moisture'. I guess because it came in such limited amounts the term 'rain' overstated the actual results. Maybe. I guess.  We are plodding our way thru August in expectation of cooler days to come in September. Or at least that's what history tells us to expect. Monsoons are essentially non-existent this year. We get a tiny sprinkle and that's it. This year we had just over 0.5" of rain in July where we would expect about 1.5" in a 'proper' monsoon season. The reason? Neither  ' La Niña ' nor ' El Ni ñ o ' currents are e...