Calling fall

Every year about this time, Don tries to "call fall."

In other words, he attempts to detect the almost imperceptible signs that signal the change of seasons. It's not always temperature-related – last year, it was 103F when he called it – but somehow he knows.

For the last few days, he's been sniffing the air, waiting for the undefinable point where the season turns from summer to fall. This morning (August 12), he called it.

A few days earlier, he said, "It occurs to me one of the unconscious things I note is the lack of birdsong." He knows the nesting season is over, the nestlings are all launched, and the singing is significantly decreased.

(That said, yesterday afternoon I saw a female quail in the barnyard that had a huge clutch of newborn chicks with her. I was photographing them from a distance and they were getting hidden behind debris on the ground, but it looked like she had 12 to 15 babies, even this late in the season. More power to her.)

One other oddity worth noting: This year we have no wild plums or blackberries. Both plants are incredibly abundant in the region, but none of them are putting out fruit.

We had no particular deviations in the weather (wind, temperatures, rainfall) than normal, but for whatever reason, nothing is producing, to Mr. Darcy's disappointment. Anyone know why?

We have vast swathes of blackberries along our road. Vast.

Finally, after a fair bit of searching among the various blackberry patches, I saw ONE small clump of unripe berry clusters.

This is odd to the point of creepy. Every year we've lived here so far, the blackberries are producing veritable cascades of fruit.

As for plums ... we must have hundreds of thousands of wild plum trees in the region. Here's the giant one in our driveway.

Normally this tree, and every other plum tree, would be dropping overripe fruit by the bucketload. This year – nada.

Some people have blamed wind (that stripped the blossoms before the fruit could set) or heat (we've had hot days, but absolutely nothing outside of the ordinary) or drought (we're no drier than any typical summer), but nothing explains the complete and utter deficit. Instead, it's like every plum tree decided en masse to take the year off. Go figure.

On the other hand, the apple trees – both wild and domestic – are producing abundantly.

On yet a different note, Don read that we might be in a La Niña year, which in our area means cold and wet (read: snow). As always preceding any winter, we will spend the next couple months getting ready for a bad one. Over twenty years ago, when we first moved to North Idaho, we didn't know what to expect concerning winters, so we decided to face each winter as if we would be snowed in for three months. While that might sound extreme, we've had a couple winters where that diligence paid off in spades.

So we'll stock up on firewood, make sure we have food for everyone (including pets and cows), and do everything else necessary to handle deep snow and inaccessible conditions.

Fall is here!