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  • A Sixty Degree Temperature Swing

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    24  87%  21%  0mph  SSW  bar29.96  steady  Winter

               Waning Gibbous Winter Moon

    As the winter moon wanes, a warm up heads our way.  Tomorrow the temperature will hit 40.  That’s a sixty degree swing within the week.  Not unusual for Minnesota, but impressive anyhow.  I’ve read that we have the most significant temperature and weather type fluctuations of anywhere on earth, though Siberia is similar.  That’s Siberia.  As in the place to which you were exiled as to the lonliest and most inclement place on earth from Moscow.  One of the most inclement places on earth.  So….

    On this point Paul Douglas, local weather sage, whose long term eye is better than his short term one, has a website up that is worth a visit, www.climatespot.com. I’ve added it to the blogroll, too.

    The sun shines today and small dimples have begun to show up at the base of trees, shrubs and the winter remnants of last year’s flower garden.  As the weather warms, the snow sinks away first at the point where something that can warm up meets the ground.  I hope that this warm up will bring a fresh snowfall, one that will fill in the dimples and freshen up the sagging snow.  It looks, and feels, like early March, deceptive though.  In March I can look out the window, notice the same changes and get the feeling, as I did momentarily this morning, plants have begun to stir underneath, that buds will open on trees and maybe a few early daffodils and the bloodroot will break the ground.  In March that is a fond hope, one with the chance of reality in a month or so, two at most.  In late January, not true.  February can have cold and snow like January.  March often has big snow, but the snow doesn’t last.  That feeling today only leads to dis-ease.  It is not a hope that can sustain itself in the near term future.

    I continue my study of Taoism, look for some new additions to the Taoism pages. 


    Faith and Spirituality Garden Great Wheel Our Land and Home 📎and tagged

  • Put on the Mad Bomber, Baby. It’s Cold Outside.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    -3  78%  27%  0mph WNW bar30.16  steady  windchill-3  Winter

                First Quarter of the Winter Moon

    “Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize, or accept another’s dogmatism.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

    La Ñina, el ñino’s cooler sister, has forced the jet stream to the south, leaving us without atomspheric protection from the frigid arctic air.  There is nothing but water and tundra between us and the North Pole, so when this happens our temperature plummets.  It was -9 at 7:00 AM this morning.  Though no one who doesn’t share our winter understands it, this is the weather that defines us as Minnesotans and most of us look forward to it.  It requires coping skills passed on from generation to generation and from natives to newcomers.  In the old days we brought our car batteries inside, bought engine block heaters.  Now we buy wicking thermal underwear, Mad Bomber hats, Sorel boots and put our cars in garages if we can.  When I moved to Minnesota in 1970, the seminary housing had electrical outlets in front of each parking spot in the student residence parking lot.  I thought, oh, my.

    The snow cover has faded, though it’s still there. If we don’t get more snow, I’m going to have to lay down straw in a few spots, though the areas I had concerns about, mostly the newly planted garlic bed, already have their mulch.


    Our Land and Home Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • A Root Cellar in Andover

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    19  65%  26%  1mph W  bar30.10 rises  windchill19  Winter

                    Waxing Crescent of the Winter Moon

    I like Sundays.  My workout schedule is 6 days a week and Sunday is a day off.   Much of my life Sunday, especially Sunday morning  was a work day, so to have the day off is a special treat in my world. 

    Of course, like most Sundays, I will write today and spend some more time on the garden plan.  Might even watch a play-off game.  How ’bout them Packers?  Winning in the snow.  Northern football.  Brett Favre comes from Mississippi; must have been a shock when he first started in Green Bay.

    Yesterday I looked over plans for root cellars.  Kate and I plan to put one in this next growing season.  I’m not sure where quite yet.  One book recommends digging into a hill, which makes sense, and I have a hill right outside the window here.  The problem is, if I dig it by hand, there are difficulties.  First order of business is to kill and remove the poison ivy.  Then, since this hill has seven oaks trees on its crest and a few stubby ash and oak there will be woody roots to remove.  Not to mention the actual digging.  That could be a good workout, though.

    None of this is impossible, of course.  The question is whether I’m willing to do all the work by hand.  If we put the root cellar in the back, we could have a backhoe come in and do the heavy lifting, then all we’d have to do is frame it out, make steps and a floor, put in a roof and call it a cellar.  To get to the hill area I’d like to use, any heavy equipment would have to come over lawn and I’m not sure I want to do that.

     Noticed in the paper today that the election has world attention.  As well it might.  Having spent the last presidential election in Singapore, however, I can report that even then taxi drivers gave a damn about whom we elect as President.  Many foreign nationals are eager to see the Bush era come to an end.  I’m with them. 


    Great Work Our Land and Home 📎and tagged

  • Mincing and Adzing

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    56  34%  36%  1mph windroseS  bar steep fall  dewpoint28  Waxing Crescent of the Snow Moon   Ordinary Time

    In cooking and in outside work I am an optimist.  When I get ready to prepare a meal, I look at the recipes and think, no problem, a cinch.  Only later do I notice that everything has to be minced smaller than a flea and the broth watched every minute for 30 minutes.  When I went outside this morning to dig the firepit, in my mind’s eye I saw the spade cut cleanly into the soil, the pit growing as more and more soil left to level out the surrounding land.  Back inside now I see I might have anticipated the large root structures underlying much of the area I’ve chosen.  But, I didn’t.  Back into the tool shed for the adze.  Cut the root, then pick up the cut end and pull, pull, pull.  Turns out this slows down the process quite a bit and ratchets up the strain on the shoulders and upper back.  Tired.


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