Category Archives: Weather +Climate

Asia, Garden, Great Wheel, Weather +Climate

An Existential Chill

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66  bar steady 30.06  1mph NE dew-point 48  sunrise 6:09 sunset 8:27  Lughnasa

First Quarter of the Corn Moon    moonrise 1533  moonset 2334

We will never be an advanced civilization as long as rain showers can delay the launching of a space rocket.  George Carlin, RIP

The drum tower in Beijing.  Anyone who’s gone on the one week quickie tour of Beijing and environs has at least had a chance to climb it.  As early as the Han dynasty (206bce to 220ace), these towers used drums and bells to mark dawn and dusk. Kate and I climbed the drum tower when we visited Beijing in 1999. (I think it was 1999.)  I recall it as a dusty place with open areas used for storage, like an old barn.  Three stories high it had a commanding view of a market and one of the old style Beijing neighborhoods.  We were there at the end of December and the drum tower was cold in the way only bare, featureless spaces can be cold.  A sort of existential chill.  Maybe Kate didn’t go up, I do not remember now.

The death of Todd Bachmann, CEO of the premier garden center corporation in the Twin Cities, shocked me.  Many of our plants started their life at Bachmann’s.  Long ago in another life I was in a year long class with a Bachmann who had chosen the Lutheran ministry.  Then, too, there is the somehow stronger link with the site itself.

So often when events happen abroad, they happen in a place that is at best abstract:  Darfur, say, or Baghdad, Ossetia, even Jerusalem.  Once you have been there, walked those streets, seen the heaped up spices and vegetables in the market near the drum tower, then what happened is no longer abstract or far-away because the context is available to your own sensorium.  My feet recall the climb in the cold December weather.  My eyes recall the sights of the market and the small shops.

A strange sense of lassitude has come over me today.  On Sunday I do not work out, so there is a feeling of expansiveness, but also relaxation, a similarity to the sabbath.  The weather is perfect, moderate, sunny, low dew-point.  A great day to work outside, but digging out the firepit seems to have used up that motor for right now.  Even so, I’ll probably pick up the spade and spading fork and begin removing day lilies to new locations.

This is a task that has a window, a window created by the ideal time to transplant iris, August.  In this way my time must conform to the garden.  It is a happy bondage, though, and one to which I willingly submit.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Weather +Climate

It Forces Me Into the Present

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60  bar steady 30.03 0mph NNW dew-pooint 54  sunrise 6:06  sunset 8:31  Lughnasa

First Quarter of the Corn Moon    moonrise 1219  moonset 2200

If you’ve ever wondered why I put all this weather and astronomical data first, good question.  The immediate answer is because I can.  My weather station gives me all the top line data with the exception of the Celtic calendar period, but I know those by heart now.  The moon names fascinate me so I have several lists of names from all the over world, and I choose one that feels right for the next month.  The lists that usually have the one I want are the Celtic, medieval English, and neo-Pagan, although I always feel a little strange with the last one because I don’t understand the roots.  The moonrise and moonset I got from a Naval Observatory website that creates a list for your location.

The secondary answer lies in weather history.  When I read back over my entries, I want to know what the conditions were like on the day in question.  Again, you ask, why?  Sometimes for gardening reasons.  Sometimes to jog my memory.  Sometimes just for fun.

The tertiary answer, though it may be the primary one, is this: it forces me into the present, right down to the temperature and barometric readings.  I like the reminder that this moment is this moment and no other.  Right now is right now.

Kate’s in Denver.  The dogs are asleep and the HD box has a so-so sci-fi movie on record so I can finish when and if I want.

A wonderful night and a good looking day tomorrow.  See you then.

Faith and Spirituality, Memories, Weather +Climate, World History, Writing

Qin Shi Huang Di

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67  bar steady 29.97  0mph NNW dew-point 58  sunrise 6:04  sunset 8:34  Lughnasa

Waxing Crescent of the Corn Moon

Last night I stood outside for a while and listened to the wind rustle the leaves of the poplars and oaks, an invisible hand caressing these giants.  Tonight stars dot the sky and the air is quiet, the temperature a cool 66 (dropped a temp since I added the info. bar above.)  These nights, summer nights, have stories that reach back in time, memories of cars pulling into neon lit drive-ins, dances in school gymnasiums and midnight rides through the countryside seeking bliss.  A special place, the summer night.

Heresy Moves West will have two parts, I see no other way unless I perform drastic surgery on the introductory material, now seven and a half pages.  My plan is to finish the second half, the stories and threads of thought that directly result in the building of liberal congregations in Minnesota.  This is, of course, the assignment I originally gave myself, but I did not know then the complex of political, theological, institutional and intellectual lines necessary to make the story comprehensible at anything more than a superficial, potted history level.  After I finish part II, then I’ll see what can be done with the whole.

The last piece of the whole considers the future, projecting a possible trajectory for the liberal faith tradition in a time of what I perceive as thinness and altogether too disparate a theological base.  Here I will begin to answer the problem I addressed in my late night post August 3rd.  Ideas have come to me of late and I have a way to go forward, at least one that makes sense to me.

In the build up to the Olympic Games the History Channel and National Geographic have run programs on Qin Shi Huang Di, the unifier and first emperor of China (Qina).  His story makes for conflicted reading or watching since he brought the dreadful warring states period to an end by subduing the seven larger states that had survived.  He also standardized weights and measures, the width of axels, coinage, language and law.  As Chinese history developed after him, both the unification and these measures of standardization contributed to China’s long continuity in culture.  In these ways he is the father of China.

He was, however, a cruel man who killed millions to achieve peace.  He killed at least a million more building the Great Wall and at least hundreds of thousands building his mausoleum. The legal system he instituted was draconian and ran against the grain of the Confucian thought world that preceded him.  His dynasty lasted only one generation beyond his and even that, from his perspective was a failure since he spent the last years of his life in a desperate search for an elixir of immortality.

Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Weather +Climate, Writing

Spaghetti Squash and a Scimitar Cucumber

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81  bar steady 29.93 1mph NE  dew-point 51  sunrise 5:59  sunset 8:38

New (Corn) Moon

Tao is the way without a way;
It is the path with no tracks.
You start walking the way of Tao when you erase anything – good or bad – you learned about Tao.

“If you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many, it’s research.” – Wilson Mizner

This quote from Mizner amuses me since I’ve just read many authors to tease out the history of Unitarian and Universalist churches in Minnesota.  Research, not plagiarism.   I put down Freedom Moves West this morning after read it, mostly, from beginning to end.  It is rare when researching a topic as outside the mainstream as this one to find a whole book exactly on point by Freedom Moves West is such a book.  It offers up the history of the Western Unitarian Conference from 1852 to 1952, the period when Minnesota churches came into being and the context nationally and regionally that surrounded their creation.

Of course, such a lot of material on point requires a good deal of sifting and weighing, matching with other sources, like church histories written by individual congregation, still it provides an overall narrative that makes the whole task better.

After my nap, I plan to sit down and organize my notes and thoughts on Heresy Moves West (yes, I sort of borrowed the notion from the book).  If I can, I hope to get to writing.  If not, tomorrow.  That will feel good.

Last night I harvested a spaghetti squash and a long, scimitar shaped cucumber.  This morning I pulled golden beets and Nante carrots.  Later on I’ll pluck one of the drying onions off the screen and a head of garlic to use in cooking supper.  This will be a vegetarian meal, one made in  honor and celebration of Lughnasa.  Celtic holy days lasted a week or more, occasioned as they usually were by markets, dances, rituals and general collectivity.

A lovely, blue sky day with reasonable dew-point and temperature.  Good deal.

Family, Garden, Weather +Climate

Integrated Pest Management

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78  bar falls 29.68  2mpn NW dew-point 65  sunrise5:57  sunset8:40  Summer

New Moon (Corn Moon or State Fair Moon)

NOAA awakened me with its trademark ululation, alerting me to the thunder storm watch declared for Anoka County.  Such notices are rare in the morning, mostly coming in the late afternoon as the heat of the day punches up cumulus clouds into congestus, then into the anvil shape of the thunderhead, sometimes 5 or 6 miles high.

This allowed plenty of time for Kate and me to conduct our family business meeting.  This included Kate’s announcement of the fourth large quarterly adjustment in a row.  She works hard and gets compensated accordingly.  She’s off right now having lunch with Penny Bond at the Istanbul Bistro.

Last night while checking the crops I found an infestation of aphids in one corn stalk’s tassel.  After checking others and only finding the one, I ripped that one of the ground and moved it far away.  This morning I found another tassel with a few aphids, this one I squeezed between fingers and thumb instead of discarding.  I’ll check it again, but I imagine that fixed it.

Watching for disease and pests is an important part of gardening.  Another important part is not overreacting. I used to overreact, head straight for the pesticide or fungicide.  Since then, I’ve learned that plants can sustain damage with no harm to their overall purpose.  The trick is to know when the balance shifts from the plant’s natural defenses to the invaders.  Even when I react, I almost never resort to pesticides (I use cygon on Iris Borers in the spring.).  Instead I look for hand removal, plant elimination or measures such as squirting with high pressure water.  That approach has served me well for the last four to five years.

Integrated pest management (IPM) encourages this kind of response.  Good cleanup in the fall, creating a soil and growing condition favorable to healthy plants and either starting or purchasing strong plants also goes a long ways toward a manageable pest and disease environment.  These are also part of an IPM strategy.

Politics, Weather +Climate

Stop in the Aisle, Say a Prayer

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75  bar falls 29.78  2mph  SSE dew-point 52  Summer, warm and sunny

Waxing Gibbous Thunder Moon

These are the dog days, so called because the Romans believed that the bright Sirius, now in night sky, added its heat to the sun, magnifying Sol’s effect. (affect=verb, effect=noun most of the time.  I have trouble with this one.)

While in the dog days, thunder storms are welcome.  They drain the heat up into the atmosphere where it cools into clouds; rain drops form and, if they get heavy enough, fall to earth.  The whole process results in cooler near earth weather.  Like today.  Yesterday in the 90’s with a dewpoint in the high 70’s; today 75 with a dew-point in the 50’s.

During the dog days my gardening energy declines and I work on inside projects like the Twin Cities/Minnesota UU history I’m crafting right now.

It is so easy, to walk the aisle in an American grocery store.  So easy to take the abundance and its affordability for granted.  Those of us raised in the US since WWII have not known want, at least those of us in the working class and up economically.  Mercados take the place of grocery stores in much of the world.  We visit farmer’s markets for the quaint experience of buying food from those who grow or raise it.  Most of the world knows only that or their own garden, their small chicken coop.  A few still hunt and gather, yes, but most of the world has entered some form of economy based either on barter or cash.

Millions have no food to buy, no clean water to drink, no sanitation to stop disease, no medical services.  We have healthy water, food to put in a grocery cart, plumbing and doctors.  No, everyone does not have access to all of these, but at least here it is because the culture is too indolent or too callous; in other places the services themselves are simply not available.

It’s worth it, now and then, to pause in the aisle of your favorite grocery and say a prayer of thanks to mother earth and to the dumb luck that put you here.

Family, Friends, Garden, Weather +Climate

Vegetables Amidst the Flowers

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70  bar steady 29.82  6mph SE dew-point 54  Summer, cool and sunny

Waxing Gibbous Thunder Moon

The storm has passed and the air shines, cleared of dust.  Clarity is a July morning after a rain.

The lilies open more and more with each passing day.  The squash and cucumbers we planted in the perennial beds beside the patio have begun their long and winding way.  Yellow squash blossoms promised fruit to come.

In several places now we have combined perennial flowers with vegetables.  In one raised bed Asiatic lilies have risen and now bloom amongst heirloom tomato plants with sturdy branches, heirloom beans and a few leaves of lettuce not yet picked.  The beets and the carrots have a Stargazer lily and a daisy in bed with them while the green peppers grow amidst bearded iris, Asiatic lilies and Russian sage.  The garlic grow only with their own kind, likewise the onions though the corn has bush beans in between the rows.

This mixture appeals to me because it defies expectation.  It is wonderful to see plants with such different missions growing alongside each other.  Is it optimal for either?  Maybe not, but who cares.

Kate sewed yesterday.  She has made Gabe two small suits, same pattern with different cloth.   He will be quite the little gentleman in them.  She’s happy to be back at the sewing, creating.  It’s important to her sense of self.

Groceries this AM, then more UU history.  Later on a party at the Stricklands for Kate and Clair.

Weather +Climate

Mammatus and Derechos

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66  bar steep rise 29.68  0mph NW dew-point 64  Summer, muggy night

Waxing Crescent of the Thunder Moon

Another line of storms moved out of the north west, along I-94.  They hit us about 8 PM, the skies green like pale mashed peas.  Kate noticed some mammatus clouds and a lightning display in the east, already headed toward someone else.  There were tornado touchdowns, far away this time.  These storms are our tsunamis, our earthquakes, our hurricanes.

They come here because of our location, our spot on the globe.  They usually spawn from cool arctic air meeting humid Gulf of Mexico air drawn up by circulating lows.  Their paths have a general line, north west to south east, but the specific spots along the way that experience damage varies wildly.  A couple of storms ago a tornado touched down south of us about 2 miles.  A couple of years ago a tornado hit an eastern part of Andover.  That may have been the storm which hit us with hail, requiring new siding and a new roof.

If a tornado hits your house, it may as well have been a tsunami, a hurricane or an earthquake.  The damage will be considerable, your life in danger.  Straight line winds generated by wall clouds can and do reach ground speeds of 90 mph.  In the first four years after we bought this house we had two straight line winds that took out several large trees in our woods.

In certain instances these are derechos. The bow-shaped echoes that get meteorologists excited are distinguishing characteristics.  So are sustained straight lines above 58 mph, over a long front.  These are mostly a North American storm.

Faith and Spirituality, GeekWorld, Great Work, Weather +Climate

Say a Little Prayer for the Miracle of Mother Earth

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70  bar steep fall 29.80  6mph NW  Dew-point 62   Summer, a thunder storm watch until 6PM.  One’s already rolled through our area.

First Quarter of the Thunder Moon

The Thunder Moon has seen its first storm even before it became gibbous.   When I went downstairs today to shut off and unplug the computer, as I always do before a storm, it made me think.

In cities it is possible to live a life pretty isolated from the natural world.  Yes, you get wet when it rains if you can’t drive from covered parking to covered parking, but it’s usually a short term experience.  Out of the car.  Dash across the parking lot or sidewalk into the shelter of a building.  Yes, up here in the northland you can’t avoid the snow and the cold, but there again, unless you go outside with snowshoes or hiking boots, your exposure does not interrupt your day very much.

Out here in the exurbs, where the cities reach has become tenuous, houses have 2 acres, 5 acres, 10 acres between them.  When the thunderstorm looms, it looms over you.  A lightning strike on or near the house would send a surge throughout our circuitry blowing out sensitive devices.  The computer holds so much of my life and work that I protect it.  But, from what?

Yes.  Mother nature.  She’s whimsical and unpredictable.  No matter what we do somewhere the river rises.  Electricity coming in a storm carries a voltage of 100 million to 1 billion volts.  It can reach 50,000 degrees fahrenheit.   Four times as hot as the sun’s surface.  A hurricane generates unbelievable power and as they intensify they endanger increasing amounts of our wealth and health as a country.

Just think back over the last couple of months.  The cyclone in Burma.  The earthquakes in China.  The worst natural disaster in our history, Katrina, was not long ago.  These events kill and or disrupt the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.  The earthquake in Pakistan or the Kobe earthquake in Japan.  Huge, nation altering events.  The tsunami in the Indian Ocean.  We remember these not only for their human suffering and property loss, but because they remind us that we are not in control of the planet.

Our own little apocalypse, death, comes from the evolution of life.  Life comes with a sell-by date.  We are not in control even of our own lives.  This is either frightening or invigorating.

I choose invigoration, so when I head downstairs to shut off the computer I say a little prayer of thanks for the miracle of mother earth and my chance for a brief stay here.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Weather +Climate

A Sabbath

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87  bar rises 29.71 0mph NW dew-point 63  Summer, hot and sticky.  Clouds forming.

Waxing Crescent of the Thunder Moon

Unless I miss my guess, the Thunder Moon will have a namesake event to celebrate its waxing phase.  The day was hot, the dew point high and clouds have begun to build.  In fact, I’ve come downstairs to see if I need to unplug the computer.

After the picture printing in the AM, I have focused the afternoon on reading Sierra Club political committee material.  It’s a well thought out approach, developed at the national level.  It’s primary aim is to influence electoral politics on behalf of an environmentally sensitive agenda.  As such, it works at the retail political level and at the election atmosphere level, too.  Don’t know yet what my role will be since there has been only one meeting and I couldn’t make it, but I’m looking forward to rolling my sleeves up and getting back in the fray.

Otherwise a laid back day, a non-workout day.  A Sabbath.