Category Archives: Weather +Climate

Great Wheel, The Move, Weather +Climate

Falling

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Fall                                                                                          Falling Leaves Moon

IMAG0683And so the leaves turn color and begin to fall. What was first a few golden river birch leaves has now become russet Amur maples, reddening oaks, the fiery leaves of the euonymus now waving against the steady greens of the spruce and the pines, waving and loosening, taking to flight, filling the blue sky with spirals of flames and sunsets. The Ojibway named this moon well.

Met with friend Mark Odegard this morning. Talking about turning 70, sailing out beyond middle age. He said he’d disregarded recent birthdays, but 70. Well. Though it’s still 2 and a half years away for me, I see it as a trailhead birthday. From 70 that long final walk begins.

Mark’s helping us put together a booklet of pictures for folks who look at the property, a take-away to go with the wild grape jam and/or jar of honey from Artemis Hives. It’s so hard to see our property without spending a year, watching the seasons come and go, experiencing the raucous symphony as perennial flowers rise, bloom and die back, vegetable push up and mature, are harvested. The orchard blooms, then fruits. The bees buzz around working throughout the growing season. In fall the firepit becomes a central spot with bonfires and smoke. This is a four-season place.

 

Family, Garden, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate

A Family Effort

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Fall                                                                                Falling Leaves Moon

IMAG0651Now all but the leeks and egg plants and peppers are done. The egg plants and peppers are trying to get one egg plant (in the case of the egg plant) and a few peppers (in the instance of the peppers) finished before the killing frost. They might make it, maybe not. The leeks I decided to leave in until the day of the chicken leek pie baking, probably Thursday.

Anne and Kate worked hard all day, trimming up the perennial beds and finally weeding the vegetable beds. I can throw down the broadcast tomorrow.

In the mid-40’s all day the weather was perfect. My gardens would look wonderful if vegetables grew well in the 40’s and 50’s. Working outside in those temperatures energizes me. Even though I’m tired now, I feel good about the day. If I’d worked the same length of time in even the mid-70’s with high humidity, I’d not gotten half as much done. I’m a northern guy.

Kate and I look forward to telling our new Colorado neighbors that we came to the Rockies for the milder winters.

Weather +Climate

Pluviophile

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Fall                                                                           Falling Leaves Moon

Pluviophile. Apparently a neologism first appearing on Facebook. Language refuses to stay within its banks, just ask those folks who police French. I saw the word for the first time today in a newspaper headline.

There was an article the other day about scientists who researched Yelp restaurant reviews (I know, scientists and Yelp don’t seem to belong in the same sentence.) and discovered they could be used to predict the weather. Or, at least to describe the weather on the day the reviewer ate in the restaurant. Turns out that over 70% of positive reviews came during sunny days and a similar percentage the other way on rainy, gloomy days.

A pluviophile, a person who finds peace and contentment in a rainy day, might skew these statistics a bit. It describes me. Rainy days find me energized and ready to go. Ditto cloudy, cold, stormy. That’s not to say that sunshine sets upsets me. It doesn’t. I just have a polyphilia for weather.

Here’s another one I discovered, too.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Weather +Climate

A Cold Rain Must Fall

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Fall                                                                                  Falling Leaves Moon

A cold rain must fall. When temperatures drop and a soaking rain comes and leaves lie bloodied in the street, the Great Wheel has advanced another turn, this time toward the dark. That fireplace reasserts itself as the center of a room and evenings seem made for candles and lace.

This is my time of year and it has barely begun, the cold rain putting a seal on its arrival. I’m ready for it.

The cold rains are Demeter’s tears for her daughter Persephone, gone now to rule for half the year in Hades. This is a medieval painting showing Persephone and Hades on their thrones.

Commentary on the news, Faith and Spirituality, US History, Weather +Climate, World History

Cities built on Vesuvius

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Lughnasa                                                                          College Moon

War is a terrible act. It marshals the forces and treasure and precious lives of foes into a bloody knuckle, don’t stop till the last soldier is down fog. Intentions, plans and often nations disappear in that fog and sometimes never re-emerge. Yet Barak Obama, the get-us-out of Iraq and Afghanistan president, is about to have his Woodrow Wilson moment.

My wife is a pacifist, my son a manager of war planes in battle. I’m an anti-Vietnam war era foreign policy realist who recognizes the anarchy existing at the level of nation-states. The always combustible atmosphere of geo-politics is even more flammable in the Middle East where oil and playing with matches has become the third millennial Great Game.

Add to that a world-defining struggle between Enlightenment rationalists and those who inhabit the caves which still project a dead God’s shadow (see post below) and we may be living during a world historical turning point. The irony, of course, is huge. We fight those inflamed by their commitment to a desert storm god not only because they harass us with bombings and public beheadings, but because their god’s realm includes the very fuel we need to continue poisoning the climate in which we all have to live.

This is a struggle between the god-drunk and those who live the dangerous life in which “knowledge (has) finally (stretched) out her hand for that which belongs to her: she means to rule and possess, and you with her!” We are out-numbered and out-flanked as the Chinese dragon grows stronger every day. What could possibly be more dangerous than this life? And, if we follow Nietzsche, “the most fruitful and enjoyable.”

As this blog says in its tagline, Welcome to the journey.

 

Weather +Climate

Wide-eyed Amazement

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Lughnasa                                                                           College Moon

The winds howled last night like a winter storm. It’s wet and 50 degrees here in Andover. The Denver forecast has the possibility of snow showers on Thursday. Phoenix had 3-5 inches of rain and streets flooded. September is a month of transition. California would like a transition with an astounding 58% of the state in the exceptional drought category, the highest. 95% of the state, that’s 95% is in severe drought and 82% in extreme drought.

Intensity:

  • D0 – Abnormally Dry
  • D1 – Moderate Drought
  • D2 – Severe Drought
  • D3 – Extreme Drought
  • D4 – Exceptional Drought

We’re a big country with a lot of natural variation in weather. That’s true. But there are climate change signals in a lot of these extremes.  Even our cool weather, caused by the stuck polar vortex, may have its root cause in the melting of Arctic sea ice.

No, not another climate rant here. Just a bit of wide-eyed amazement at the differences in this nation’s weather.

 

Aging, Family, Great Work, Weather +Climate

Nocturne

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Lughnasa                                                            New (College) Moon

Rain so hard it sounded like hail has scoured the air, washing the dust out and dropping the temperature. The tornado watch expires in half an hour though we’ll have more thunderstorms later tonight. Weather is local; climate is global. Climate change in this case has given us days with more moisture in the air, driving up the chance of stronger storms and more concentrated rain fall.

(Curry The Line Storm)

Robert Jay Lifton, a grand old man of American letters, known for his psychological and psychiatric work on war and nuclear weapons, has written an interesting article in the NYT, The Climate Swerve. He’s careful, doesn’t overstate the evidence, but he makes a point similar to one I made here a month or so ago. Something’s happening to public opinion about climate change. Something pressing the public toward concern, possibly creating the political climate necessary for making difficult choices. Read the article for his thoughts about “stranded assets.” It’s a concept you will hear about more often in the future.

Had lunch with Jon today at the Craftsman on Lake Street. He was in town, briefly, for the wedding of a long time friend, flew in yesterday and out today. Dressed in a new blue striped dress shirt, dress slacks, neat beard and his curly hair, he hardly looks 45, almost 46. More like mid-30’s.

The bond of this family has begun to gel, why now I’m not sure, though it must have 500Jon Gabe Mesomething to do with Ruth and Gabe getting older. There’s a realization about our own aging, our fragility that comes as kids advance in years, but in this case it’s a sweet realization, a realization that the future, as the song says, is not ours to see. But that that’s ok since we know well some who will inhabit it, shape it, lead it.

The future they inhabit will have its own set of agonies and joys. When Ruth and Gabe confront a world altered by climate change, by the polarization of political parties in our time, by the struggles to drag some of the Middle East back to a seventh century golden age(that was never golden), by the rise of China and India and Brazil and Indonesia, they will be in that world as we are in ours: a bit confused, somewhat hopeful, mostly living their lives from day-to-day just as we do.

 

 

Weather +Climate

Higher Powers

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Lughnasa                                                                    New (College) Moon

Thunder crackles, makes low rumbles as the day, heated to 91, cools down. 77 at the moment. This is weather balancing itself, the heated, humid air making storm clouds which transfer cooler air and moisture from higher in the sky down to earth. The process is effective, but it can be dangerous. Lightning and tornadoes and straight line winds and hail.

Our lives are, in this sense, like trees. Our homes, our gardens, our orchards must remain in place, subject to changes in temperature, moisture and wind. Like the tree our built environment can sustain damage beyond our ability to repair and then we must rebuild. The tree has its saplings; we have construction crews.

Even though these storms raise the possibility of havoc, their power, well, it’s like nothing else. They may not be alive in the strictly scientific sense, but they give the earth a voice and a strong hand. Like many Midwesterners I’ve been listening to this voice my whole life, humbled by it. Anyone who has seen and heard a tornado knows that there are forces greater than our own. A higher power, in the AA parlance.

 

 

Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Weather +Climate

Wild, Wild Grapes

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Lughnasa                                                                 Lughnasa Moon

500P1030676A cool breeze predicted autumn as I picked wild grapes this morning . These wild grapes have overgrown our amur maples and will get cut back when the lawn restoration work is done later in the fall. That will hardly diminish their presence though because wild grapes grow all over our woods, some branching out from vines thicker than my upper arm. The woods also provides morels in the spring.

Over the years I’ve highlighted the opossum, the great horned owl, wild turkeys, pileated woodpecker, woodchuck, salamander, newt, toads, frogs, dragon flies, deer, rabbits, chipmunks, squirrels, bumblebees, raccoons and snapping turtles that live on this property, too. A significant aspect of living in the exurbs is the diversity of wild flaura andIMAG0506 fauna, often on the chunk of land on which you live. This is a melding of the human built and the wild.

The Denver Post recounts encounters with bears, mountain lions and rattle snakes. In Minnesota residents encounter bears and wolves, perhaps the occasional lynx. Most of these encounters occur because human habitation encroaches further and further into formerly wild lands.

These predators are certainly part of the wild eco-system, but the bulk of wild life are prey species, amphibians, reptiles and birds. It’s these we humans encounter most often and which we often discount, as if their small size or lack of tools for killing make them less significant. Yet the woodchuck, or land-beaver, that occupied a tree here for a day, is a wild animal just as much as the wolf or bear. So, too, the opossum and all those others that flee when humans arrive, who try to keep their visibility to a minimum.

We are co-habitants, not owners really, of this land. Though we will sell it to other humans, we are not selling the wild life. Their lives will adapt to the new humans just as they adapted to us, either by leaving or hiding or just going on about their day.

The wild flaura includes not only morels and grapes, but ironwood, jack-in-the-pulpit, oaks white, red and burr, elm, ash, black locust, cedar, nine-bark and rhus radicans, or poison ivy. Barring a clear cut of the woods, which I consider unlikely, they, too, will remain.