Brave new flowers

It is indubitably fall around here.

The rose hips are abundant.

We're supposed to dip to juuuust above freezing for one morning next week, though it's an outlier and may not get that cold.

But despite the cooler temps, the garden is having a last gasp of optimism.

In fact, things are still blooming with flowers. Brave new flowers. The tomatoes are loaded with blossoms:

So are the nuclear strawberries:

The spaghetti squash are like the Energizer Bunny. They keep going and going and going...

The single volunteer cantaloupe is still putting out flowers.

Even the potatoes look cheery.

Yes, these are all brave new flowers. I don't know how long they'll last.

The true sign of fall

The fall equinox has come and gone, and officially it's now fall.

However in the Lewis household, the true sign of fall is the Changing of the Sheets.

Yes, bedsheets. During the hot summer months, we strip the bed down to cotton sheets and a light blanket. But when fall comes, I wash the cotton sheets and hang them to dry...

...before packing them away for the next nine months. Then out come the flannel sheets.

Ah, bliss. Both Don and I sleep better in a snuggly bed with flannel sheets and more blankets.

Yep, the true sign of fall.

Preparing for winter

We had a day of rain predicted today (Thursday), so yesterday Don and I did a lot of battening down. But it wasn't just battening down for rain; it was the precursor of battening down for winter. In fact, winter has been more on our minds lately after Don "called fall" this week.

Let me back up a bit to explain why this is important to us. In fact, let me back up all the way to  2003, when we first moved from southwest Oregon to north Idaho. We moved in June, which meant the weather was lovely. We had about five months, perhaps more, to anticipate what lay in store for us over the cold months. And here's the thing: Depending on whom we talked to, the winters were either "not bad" or they were horrible. Which was it?

Keep in mind we were far more rural in Idaho than we were in Oregon. With two small children (five and seven at the time), we knew we didn't want to risk their health or safety by not being ready for what, conceivably, could be a hard winter.

So we made a decision: By October, we would be prepared to be snowed in for three months. This meant we would have enough people food, pet food, and livestock food so we wouldn't have to go to the store for three months, and enough firewood to stay warm. Could we do it?

Yes we could, and we did. And boy, did it pay off.

The first couple of winters were fine. We got snow, sure; but it wasn't much and it wasn't bad. Were we overreacting by our "snowed in for three months" rule?

And then the winters of 2005/6 and 2006/7 hit like a ton of bricks. During the former, we had tons of snow. During the latter we had tons of snow and high winds. Combined, they left something of a psychic scar that made us never underestimate the power of winter. Ever.

The winter of 2006/7, we probably got five feet of snow (in areas north of us, apparently it was upwards of 12 feet). While this may sound like no big deal for battle-hardened Minnesotans, the two-mile dirt road we lived on at the time was not county-maintained, so it was up to the neighbors to keep it open. The combined efforts of everyone's mishmash of tractors, pickup truck plow blades, and (at times) snow shovels worked – kinda – but it was constant and brutal work and wasn't always effective.

While we weren't snowed in for three months, we got close. That second harsh winter – when heavy snowfall combined with high winds meant our road was closed under incredibly deep drifts – our remote neighborhood fell into a pattern: Storms came at about weekly intervals that, for whatever reason, always came in on weekends. It took about six days to clear the road (no exaggeration). If a storm came in over the weekend, then we were able to get the road opened by about Friday. Everyone would pour out of their homes, dash into town for mail, groceries, and errands, and make it home just in time for another blizzard to close the road.

This happened over and over and over and OVER. Those who worked away from home had to make endless excuses to their bosses. Many had no option except to work remotely. One person who normally commuted to a city job an hour away had to stay with a coworker for a few weeks because otherwise she would miss too much work. One family whose kids attended the public schools simply couldn't make it out.

Keep in mind these winter conditions also meant commercial roads were also impacted. Sections of a major highway were drifted shut numerous times that winter, so trucks were unable to deliver food, mail, hardware, or other items. Several times that winter, both restaurants and the grocery store in town were closed, either because of a lack of supplies or because employees couldn't make it to work. The local school district took a lot of snow days during those two winters.

Meanwhile our 300-foot driveway drifted shut so many times that after a few storms, there was literally nowhere else to put snow. The smartest thing we did was park our car at the end of the driveway before one of the blizzards. For the next two months, we snowshoed to and from the car, transporting the children (along with mail and groceries) on a hay sled. Had we not parked the car at the end of the driveway, we – literally – would not have been able to leave the house for eight weeks running. As it was, we had to shovel the car out after each blizzard.

I remember after one particularly nasty storm, a heroic neighbor who lived about a mile away – and who was a heavy equipment operator – got busy trying to clear one heavily drifted quarter-mile section of road not far from our house. He didn't own a snow blower, so he used his good-sized bulldozer to push snow. It took him EIGHT HOURS of hard work to get that one quarter-mile section of road opened, and by the end of it we had nine-foot canyon walls of snow along the sides. (To this day, I regret I never took a photo – it was in the days before I owned a pocket camera.)

For these reasons, we've never relaxed our "snowed in for three months" rule when it comes to approaching winter. In Idaho, you just never know.

Anyway, this is a long explanation of why we're starting to think about getting ready. Will it be an abnormally harsh winter? Don has never "called fall" this early before.

Don read something interesting a couple weeks ago about how global weather patterns are being impacted by one of the greatest natural disasters no one has ever heard of: The Hunga Tonga underwater volcanic explosion that occurred in January of 2022.

This event was spectacularly enormous, "bigger than any other modern volcanic eruption, even bigger than Mount Pinatubo and possibly Krakatoa," according to this article. "The erupting lava instantly vaporized fantastic, unimaginable amounts of sea water, which billowed into the atmosphere, changing the water composition of Earth’s atmosphere and heating it up for years. In just a few days, the superheated water from the Hunga Tonga eruption blanketed the entire globe, pole to pole, East to West. ... Current estimates [for the amount of water blasted into the stratosphere] are three times higher than initially thought: scientists now believe it was closer to 150,000 metric tons, or approximately 40 trillion gallons of superheated water instantly injected into the atmosphere." Scientists expect the effects to persist globally for a long, long time.

So yeah, a hard winter is not outside the realm of possibility.

Therefore yesterday was a day of miscellaneous battening-down chores. It started with a long-overdue repair of a couple of flat tires. Not even flat; utterly destroyed. One tire was on a small trailer we haven't been able to use for some time; and the other, crucially, was on our log splitter.

We have a bunch of wood to split...

...including rounds far too large to use our manual splitter.

Don was able to get the new tire installed. Now the splitter can be moved to where we need it to go.

Time's a-wastin'. We have to get the winter's firewood put up.

Other miscellaneous chores included re-stacking and re-tarping a pile of lumber...

...scrubbing out and refilling the cow's water tank...

...and moving the last of the older round bales into the barn. (The newer hay bales are stacked and tarped in the front driveway; we'll be moving them to the back, nearer the barn, before the snow flies.)

We still have lots to do before winter, including (hopefully) building an awning on the back of the barn to offer more shelter for the livestock this winter.

If it will be a hard winter, we want to be ready for it.

Calling fall

Monday morning, as I was picking blueberries, Don came out to tell me he had completed a project he'd been working on. Then he added, "And I'm calling fall."

"Calling fall" is something Don tries to do each year about this time. Clearly this has little to do with the actual calendar or even the daily temperature (a couple years ago, he called fall when it was 103F). But there are subtle signs he's good at picking up.

"Listen," he said, after tell me he was calling fall. I paused and listened and heard ... nothing. It was as if the birds and insects were taking a break. The silence was peaceful, not ominous; but it was also clearly a transition between seasons.

Then yesterday morning I was hanging laundry out to dry on the back porch. It was fairly early, maybe 10 am, and I heard a gentle breeze rustle the leaves of the oak tree right next to the house. The leaves aren't even close to changing color – they're still perfectly green – yet they somehow managed to quietly rattle with an autumn sound.

This is the earliest Don has ever called fall. He hemmed and hawed about calling it even earlier, and kept second-guessing himself because it was SO early in the season. It makes me wonder if it's some sort of indicator about what kind of winter we'll have.

Yes, fall is on its way. Don hasn't been wrong yet.

Fall foliage

After two months of lovely progression, all the trees in our yard have finally finished dropping their leaves.

The process starts in mid-September, when the honey locust leaves start carpeting the path through the yard.

By this point, the oaks starts showing just a wee bit of color.

But October – ah, that's the glorious month. By the first, things are really ramping up.

Every leaf becomes a thing of beauty.

It helps to have sunny days during this month, as it makes things positively sparkle.

You see, this is why I have an almost unhealthy obsession with the trees in our yard. After decades of seeing little but coniferous trees (stately and beautiful), deciduous trees – especially those that change color – fill me with giddy and childish glee. God bless whoever planted these beauties in our yard.

Early-morning sunshine through one of the oaks and the honey locust.

This time of year, the sun seems to "glow" through the leaves more prominently, making even green leaves look magical.

The yard looks very picturesque this time of year.

By the end of October, the whole trees are fully ablaze.

The colors are so bright and rich, they almost seem artificial.

And then...

...they start to fall.

Leaves gather along fence lines.

Mr. Darcy starts to blend in.

This is the view from the garden. Half the oak has dropped its leaves, half is still in full foliage.

If it seems as if I'm a bit obsessed with our oak trees this time of year ... well, guilty as charged.

Here's Maggie, framed by some branches.

By mid-November, the trees were (mostly) bare, and it was time to get raking. 

This is usually a relaxed, multi-day process, depending on weather and my work schedule. Since not all the leaves had dropped from one of the oaks...

...I focused on the portion of the yard where the trees were mostly bare.

Even raking, the leaves are lovely.

I got about half the yard raked, then paused over Thanksgiving weekend. This gave the willow trees a chance to drop everything (whomp!) on the lawn, which meant essentially I had to start raking all over again. Rookie mistake.

Preponderance of willow leaves on the left and oak leaves on the right.

Although it was 39F on the day I finished up, I worked up enough heat to discard my jacket and scarf.

A final push to get everything done before dark.

The leaf container is pretty full, but that's okay. Everything will compress down and start decomposing over the winter, which means it can be used in the garden in the spring.

Here's Darcy, with a clean yard behind him.

I still have to rake the side yard, but that's a task for another day.