Posts Tagged ‘seasonal transition’
Not Instantaneous
When we emerged from the front door this morning, there was a layer of ice on Asher’s water bowl on the steps. Today is the first time this fall that we walked out to sub-freezing air temperatures. Ironically, there was no frost on the grass. The recent rain has saturated the ground which aids in transferring the residual warmth remaining in the earth from summer.
There is no instantaneous point during the change of seasons that entirely switches things over from one to the other. This morning both Cyndie and I found ourselves digging for outerwear –and in Cyndie’s case, a long underwear top– from the closet that we haven’t used in probably 6 months.
Passing snow showers are forecast for the afternoon.
The transition to the frozen season happens in fits and starts. Below freezing at night, above freezing during the day. When several consecutive daytime high temperatures stay below freezing, the transition has progressed to a new level and all of our senses tell us fall is over and winter is on the prowl.
The loss of tree leaves also happens gradually. Some trees started shedding leaves in the second half of August. Fall colors began to burst in the latter half of September. Now, as we approach the end of October, the transition to bare branches is slowly underway.
When tree leaves fall straight down to paint a large circular swath of the grass beneath a tree, it creates a visual spectacle of exclamation that winter is nigh.
As of this morning, my knit stocking cap has replaced all my summer hats.
The leaves will continue to fall.
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Transition Month
August seems like a transition month. It doesn’t really stand alone as a destination month that we look forward to arriving. Other spring and summer months really carry their own weight (my local geographic region-centric take). April showers and May flowers. Everything about June is great. July being smack dab in the middle of summer and including the U.S. Independence Day makes it the jewel of them all.
Then August arrives and the shortening of days becomes more noticeable and the onset of fall sports training camps begin opening. Everything about the month tends to point toward the arrival of September when sports seasons start and schools begin classes.
Sure, locally grown sweet corn becomes available in August, but we’ve been watching fields growing all summer long so it just doesn’t seem like an exclusively August thing.
Cyndie arrived home yesterday and Asher and I were both thrilled to see her again. She gathered produce from her garden and reported that her trumpet vine is going to flower. Her new pond vacuum arrived so she assembled that and gave our landscape pond a serious going-over.
While she was opening the mail and packages that had accumulated, she noticed one was for me. I hadn’t even looked. It was my tent rainfly from The North Face!
I had received no prior communication from them since sending it off to Texas for assessment. They did what I hoped they would, and what I wouldn’t have been able to achieve if I tried to do it myself. They completely resealed all the seams like new.
The North Face has made me very happy once again. Such incredible support to one of their customers!
It’s got me thinking that August is a really great month after all and deserves to be appreciated on its own merits.
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Passing Peak
One day you wake up and notice the dominant shade out the window is yellow-brown. Honestly, it seems like it happens overnight. Tuesday, the trees were ablaze with vibrant hues of red and orange with green and yellow highlights backed by a blue sky to set them all off magnificently.
Yesterday, it looked as if a switch had been flipped to subdue the magnificence and replace it with a dulled pallor of decaying leaves.
The high heat of Tuesday held the potential of triggering some thunderstorms overnight but our roof received nary a drop. Somewhere around zero-dark-thirty, my full bladder nudged me out of a perfect slumber and in semi-consciousness I suspected I was hearing rainfall. Turned out to be the furnace fan noise through the floor vent.
A trip to the bathroom rousted me enough to check my phone for weather details and I saw there was an alert of lightning strikes nearby. I pulled up the radar image and discovered the line of stormy weather had split around us to the north and south. That would be great luck if you were hoping to dodge bad weather but it is rotten luck when the ground is so dry it is cracking open in a gaping grimace of distressed thirst.
The sparse sprinkles that misted down from passing clouds yesterday afternoon were just a mocking wetness that barely settled dust. It is weird to watch the dark rain clouds in the sky moving by all around us but never overhead.
The bright spot that occurred for us was the arrival of a truck up the driveway with a logo from the underground cable company that is installing fiber optic broadband internet cables in our county. The guy had just completed splicing the line at the road and was coming up to the house to check the strength of the signal.
We now have an appointment scheduled for in-home installation of the modem, the last step to get us connected to high-speed internet.
At least the technician didn’t have to deal with any rain while he worked to splice our fiber.
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Gentle Reminder
This year’s initiation to snow cover came gently and during the weekend, causing minimal impact to our routine. We aren’t sure about the history of our horses’ experience with snow but there was no indication they were the least bit disturbed by the arrival of whiteness.
Their greater concern of late is the frequent report of rifles reverberating in the valley. In the days leading up to the actual 9-day deer hunting season, there are a lot more gunshots heard than the few bursts at dusk and dawn when the season is underway. My guess is early gunshots are a result of shooters aligning their scopes and firing their weapons in rehearsal for the real thing, based on a comment I heard from someone years ago.
Not being a hunter myself, I just rely on what others have told me.
After a single day, the snow is rapidly disappearing.
I’ll take that as a reminder that the transition of seasons doesn’t always happen in an instant. This year we have been spared one of those sudden blast storms with deep snow that ends up lasting the entire winter. I’m lookin’ at you, 1991 Halloween Blizzard.
Maybe I’m just getting old, but I’m perfectly okay with a gentle reminder when season-long snowfall is nigh.
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Relative Something 