I look back on those years and laugh. Since I moved to Minnesota I have become obsessed with the weather, most Minnesotans are. Can you blame us? We have snow, blizzards, tornadoes, severe thunderstorms and flash floods, straight line winds, hail that can be the size of a golf ball, temperatures so cold you can throw a pot of boiling water into the air and it will freeze before it hits the ground, temperatures so hot you can fry and egg on the sidewalk, tropical humidity, drought, you name it we have it except hurricanes, that is one weather event we don’t have to worry about. Even with climate change and the oceans rising we won’t ever be near the coast. I check the weather forecast and maps multiple times a day because the weather can, and does, change in the blink of an eye. It happened a few years before I left California, but people still talk about the Halloween Blizzard of 1991.
I have a thermometer on my deck that Bookman and I consult constantly. We don’t have a rain gauge but I will probably get one next year. Last year when I found out how the weather people measure snowfall amounts I came this close to grabbing a ruler and going out into my garden and taking measurements myself. The only thing that kept me from doing it is the time it takes to bundle up in all the outdoor gear for something that would take maybe five minutes to execute once outside.
Now add to this an interest in gardening, an activity in which weather is of paramount importance. It deepens my weather obsession because I notice the weather even more and see its effects on a small scale. I can curse the weather but I have to also figure out a way to work with it no matter how good or bad it is. There have to be contingency plans for excessive heat, drought, wind, and frost. Since I have sandy soil I don’t have to worry about too much rain which is a relief but it makes lack of rain difficult because my soil doesn’t hold water very well. Mulch and compost help but only get one so far.
This gardening season has been a crazy one. Lots of rain early, a late spring followed by a cool start to summer. Then a
heat wave followed by a severe drought and then another heat wave. Fall has been long and unusually warm. The average frost date is October seventh. We just got our first frost this morning, October 20th. Since the end of September we have been getting rain again and our drought has been downgraded to moderate edging towards unusually dry. It has rained all weekend with brief breaks. Yesterday afternoon we had pea-sized hail. Today there was a chance of snow. The snow didn’t happen though there was a short period of sleet.This means the growing season is over. I am glad because the days are getting so short there isn’t enough daylight after dinner in the evenings to do anything outdoors and several rainy weekends in a row haven’t helped much either. I am sad too because this has been the best gardening season ever and now it is done. It has been so much fun writing about it every Sunday and taking photos. I have paid more attention to what is actually happening in my garden than I ever have before and I have been more excited about it too. I am already looking forward to next year, making lists of new things to plant, new projects, new beds for growing more.
Bookman, my intrepid garden helper, had fun this year too. We built an herb spiral and created a new garden path. He hauled more bags of dirt and compost than he cares to remember and lost count of how many trips he made to the free wood chip piles. He told me recently that he is looking forward to next year’s garden but asked hesitantly, we won’t have to build anymore herb spirals or anything like that will we? No, I said, but I have a great idea for making a branch and twig arch over the garden path from all the tree and shrub prunings. He kind of looked a little scared at that. Don’t worry, I reassured him, it will be easy! Famous last words, right?
Today, in a brief break in the rain, I bundled up and went out and picked all the pumpkins. It is best to wait until frost if you can because the cold increases their sweetness. Nine pumpkins! And there are three green ones still on the vine. I don’t know if they have a chance of getting ripe. I guess I will find out!
While I was out I was also surprised by a visitor. This pretty kitty often visits the garden. Waldo and Dickens are strictly indoor cats and when they see this fellow in the garden they get so excited and run from window to window. The visitor never comes up to the deck or the window though and usually when Bookman or I walk out the door he runs away. But I think I surprised him as much as he surprised me and for some reason he didn’t run away but instead sat watching me. Maybe next year we can become friends.This will be my last regular garden post. One might pop up now and then before the snow really does fall and then again when the seed catalogs start arriving in January and when I drag my mini-greenhouse out in late March or early April. And if you all don’t mind, they will become regular again next gardening season. So until then, I leave you to ponder the immortal words of Cicero:
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
Ah yes, life is good.
I love your quote! My grandson is making me a ‘house’ with MineCraft – a video game. He put in a library for me – now I’ll have to ask for a garden.
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Kathleen, isn’t it great? There seems to be a natural fit between gardening and books. Oh, yes, you definitely need a virtual garden to go with that library!
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I have the library but when it comes to gardening I am all thumbs…can’t even manage a bonsai or keep a money plant alive for more than a month! Sigh! Atleast I get half the world! P.S. you are inspiring me as usual and I have been poking my flatmate about the potential of having a terrace garden thingy since we live in an apartmentโฆshe is not giving me amused looks! In fact they are downright intolerant! ๐
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cirtnecce, as long as your thumbs are green you should be a fine gardener ๐ I hope you can convince your flatmate to do a a terrace garden. I had one for several years before I got a house. They are really easy to care for — no weeding! And the things you can grow in a container is amazing.
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I also spend the first years of my youth in Southern California, LA. I never gave the weather a second thought, biked to school on winter days in a t-shirt, once in a while heard the rain, but I don’t remember the Santa Ana’s in my day, much, much earlier than yours. Yes, I recall the frosty morning, the fruit frost warnings on the radio (for all the orange and lemon trees that once bordered the city), and the occasional day of rainfall, the water dripping off the drain pipe. Now the weather rules my life, not for the same reasons you have, but another that sometimes befalls people whose thermostat no longer works.
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Richard, you don’t remember the Santa Ana’s the hot, dry winds that blow in hard off the desert? They must have been so disturbing for you that you have blocked them out ๐ There are many reasons to be obsessed with the weather. Bookman’s thermostat doesn’t work as well as it used to because of his MS. It is good that you are able to move to warmer climes during the cold season. I don’t suppose you have to think much about the weather in Hawaii!
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No, I don’t recall the Santa Ana’s in the days long before yours, but I have experienced them in Santa Barbara on an occasional visit. Like the Mistral in Provence or Foehns in Switzerland, everyone goes nuts. And I do think about the weather each day I’m in Hawaii, maybe think is the wrong word for what I feel is the warmth and the good fortune that I can come here willy nilly. Often when I arrive or just step outside on a sunny morning, a great smile appears out of nowhere.
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It’s curious how certain types of wind can set people on edge. I hope you have plenty of sunny mornings that make you smile!
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I find that by the time September comes around, I am gardened out. It happens every year. I love my garden, and spend many happy hours in it, but by September and the cooler days and nights, I can’t go in. I think I don’t want to do anything because it’s all about to die anyway. Yet, I love looking at my garden in autumn, and this year my garden really had some shape to it with the taller plants at the back finally growing.
I love your quote, that’s exactly it. Books and gardens ๐
Winter is when I replenish myself, and by February I am longing for green when the ground is still covered in snow. Then it’s time for catalogues and dreaming of planting in May!
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You seem to be obsessed by the weather in a very healthy way – perhaps gardening is a good way of dealing with this. In UK weather is so changeable it makes us all into obsessives and of course gardening is very popular here too. Quite sad in a way to have the last of these posts. I hope that you have a lot of good books to get through winter!
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Ian, if my obsession ever tips to unhealthy, please let me know! ๐ Oh yes, gardening is very popular in the UK and you produce so many wonderful garden writers too who tell me about wonderful plants I can’t grow in my own garden which sometimes produces a bit of envy on my part. Until I strike it rich and can build a year-yound greenhouse or figure out how to garden in a few feet of snow, frost means no more gardening. I am glad you have enjoyed the posts though. And yes, I have plenty of books to get me through the winter including several on gardening that I hope to read!
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Susan, yes, I am usually tired of the Garden by September as well. I’ve been so busy this year though it was the middle of September before I even knew it. Winter is a nice time to replenish oneself, imagine next year’s garden, read books about gardening, and not feel guilty about sitting on the sofa instead of weeding the veggie beds. About February though, you are right, I start to long for green too and May seems so far away. Isn’t that a great Cicero quote? Books and gardens, two good things that go great together ๐
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Your gardening posts were a treat. All of them. I so much enjoyed them.
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Cath, thanks! ๐
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I hadn’t realised about the South California connection. What took you all the way to Minnesota? I share your weather obsession, but then most of us Brits do. You can never tell from one day to the next what is going to happen. Today is very mild for October – 18C in some parts of the country, but we’ve been forecast a month’s rain over the next five days and I think most of it has fallen today. Yesterday we have thunder and lightning. A bit of frost would be nice and peaceful.
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Alex, yup, born and raised in the San Diego area and went to college in Los Angeles. The short version of moving to Minnesota is Bookman and I were going to establish residency so I wouldn’t have to pay out of state fees when I went to the University of MN for a Ph.D in literature. Never started the program but we liked it so much here we stayed. We got snow yesterday! It melted as soon as it hit the ground, but still. I hope you don’t get as much rain as forecast there!
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I loved your gardening posts! It was too hot this year and I didn’t have a great garden year. Lots of kale, some tomatoes and cucumbers, a smattering of other things, but it was just too hot and I didn’t water enough. Oh well. I love your pumpkins! I think I got two butternut squash; they are still sitting out there, waiting (and waiting) for a frost… we usually have one by now but it’s still quite warm here. And your little garden visitor is adorable. I wonder if it’s a little girl? Calicos usually are. What a striking little kitty.
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wherethereisjoy, thanks! Too bad your garden didn’t do well this year. There is always next year! Isn’t it a pretty kitty? s/he blends right in with the fall colors.
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Good quote! Too bad I only have the latter. ๐ฆ But, I can always hop over here to visit yours. So, thanks Stefanie, for taking me on a virtual visit through your gardening journals through the growing season. How time flies. What will replace the joy of gardening when winter comes for you?
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Arti, Cicero knew what he was on about ๐ Perhaps one day you will have a garden to go with your library. I am glad you enjoyed my garden posts. No gardening in the winter means more time for reading! And some of that reading will be about gardening ๐
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Of all the places I have lived, I hate to say that Southern California was my least favorite. I do remember those Santa Ana winds. They sucked all the energy out of life, it seemed. Otherwise, I remember it being quite temperate. I went to school in Minnesota, and grew to love it – even the bitterly cold winters. The autumn was the best since the bluffs were golden and beautiful at that time of year. Great time and place to have keg parties! I miss the change of seasons in Savannah, although the weather is usually pretty nice. Hurricanes are the big excitement and sometimes they come way too close. Our little corner of the U.S. map sits in a small indentation between FL and SC, so we usually escape major hits that go to the bits of land that “stick out” further into the ocean. I’ll miss the gardening posts, Stef. Those are some mighty fine looking pumpkins. Bravo for you. It turned out to be a very successful garden for you this year. (Unlike some of us who shall remain anonymous).
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Grad, I can’t say I like So Cal very much either and I grew up there! As long as I have a choice I will not live there again. It seems whenever the Santa Anas would blow for more than three or four days I would end up with a sinus infection so they were nothing but misery to me. I find there is a stark beauty in the cold winters here and they make me appreciate the warmer months that much more! I am glad you don’t have to worry too much about hurricanes in Savannah. I am glad you enjoyed the gardening posts, I enjoyed writing them. I will be reading some gardening books over the winter so there will be those to look forward to! Pumpkins are so easy and fun to grow and look so pretty this time of year. You had some garden success too so don’t sell yourself short! Next year will be even better! ๐
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It’s been so fun to read your gardening posts! I don’t garden at all but have dreams of doing so one day ๐
I was wondering if you guys got snow! Right now is my favorite time of the year in Texas. It’s sunny most of the time but the heat is finally gone. It’s finally time to enjoy being outdoors!
Anyway so do you have any recipes planned for the pumpkins?
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Iliana, I am glad you have enjoyed them! I hope one day you do have a garden, it is so much fun. We got some snow on Monday but it melted as soon as it hit the ground. We’ve gone from warmer than normal to colder than normal. I’m beginning to think normal is not longer a good measurement for our weather. Oh the pumpkins will be made into pie and muffins and pancakes and probably soup. We love pumpkin at my house and I think we have enough to last us through the whole winter if we are prudent ๐
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I love that quote! I’ll miss your garden posts–no chance of a winter garden then? I think such things do exist, but it is probably way too cold to have one practically speaking. Of course thinking about them and planning is part of the fun! Your pumpkins look great–you’ll have to share what you make out of them. Are they only for cooking or will you carve one, too? And your little (actually he looks like a big boy!) visitor is too cute. He’s checking out your work it seems!
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Danielle, Cicero was a smart man ๐ Thanks, I have enjoyed writing about my garden. No chance of one in winter, it gets way too cold here. I would need a heated greenhouse in order to grow anything. Nope, the pumpkins are all for eating. I am too greedy to “waste” one carving it! The visitor is a large cat. While I was off snipping more pumpkins off the vine he was over checking out the ones I had already cut and left on the path. I don’t think he realized I was out there too and when we met we were both rather startled.
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As you know, I don’t garden, but I like doing so vicariously through you and think your idea of a branch and tree arch is really cool, as long as I don’t have to build it.
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Emily, I am glad you enjoyed my garden posts. I am very excited about my branch arch. I am hoping we will be able to actually do it!
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We joke in Scotland that we have 4 seasons in one day, but it’s often true, we’re completely weather obsessed, sunny days are precious. I’ve really enjoyed your garden posts, especially as I don’t have plans for my own garden now as we hope to move to another one soon. It’s the only year I haven’t planned garden improvements and we’ve been here over 25 years. Maybe you shouldn’t tell Bookman that though, mind you it sounds as if it’s keeping him fit and well.
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