A New Low: cold snap in Montana

http://www.findlocalweather.com/weather_maps/temperature_north_america.html

When I got up Tuesday, the temperature in our back room, where we’ve been sleeping since my surgery, was 39ºF, or just under 4ºC. Upstairs in the bedroom we’re not using, I hit the “on” button of an electric heater to check the temperature there: 26ºF (-3ºC). I’m considering opening the refrigerator door downstairs to help heat that room, and using the bedroom as a freezer.

Whatever happened to autumn?

Having more or less skipped spring this year, the weather decided to go for a double and skip autumn as well. This it accomplished by delivering the hottest September on record—on a par with a normal July—and then plunging straight into winter.

GBMD Lia Purpura, “First Leaf”

There are actually two poems from recent New Yorkers that I want to share, but for the moment I’ll stick to the more recent and most seasonally apt one. If a dozen other garden bloggers already  posted this, my apologies for being out of touch. (I’m still getting online only intermittently--more intermittently than I'd realized; I can't believe it's a month since I've posted! Well, the garden season here has ended so precipitously that I should have more time soon.)

I’m always curious, when I post a poem, whether readers like it or not, and why, so please feel free to post a comment.

First Leaf

by Lia Purpura
The New Yorker October 5, 2009

That yellow
was a falling off,
a fall
for once I saw
coming—
it could
in its stillness
still be turned from,
it was not
yet ferocious,
its hold drew me,
was a shiny switchplate
in the otherwise dark,
rash, ongoing green,
a green so hungry
for light and air that
part gave up,
went alone,
chose to leave,
and by choosing
embellishment
got seen.

____________________________

That first yellow leaf--usually a whole cluster--usually appears here sometime in mid-August, irrespective of the weather. So it was this year, even though we had a September as hot as most Julys. Someone told me that the trees react not to weather but to the length of days. That would explain why now, after two weeks of winter weather, the trees still hang onto their leaves, tenacious and suspicious.

Living off the garden

Well, the blogging pause lasted longer than expected, even by me. I posted my intention to go dark at the end of June, and here it is mid-August. It’s hardly the same garden. In fact, it’s hardly the same as it was two weeks ago, when I left for my second trip to Toronto this summer. At that point, most of this plot was bare dirt.

Crazy Weather

I keep planning to write a post about yard work, of which there has been plenty, but the weather conspires against me. It’ll warm up nicely, I’ll take a deep breath and relax; well, winter’s over at last, I’ll be able to get out into the garden soon... And two days later, wham, six to twelve inches of snow. Even when the temperatures rise, it takes days for all that to melt.

(One area in northern Montana got four feet of snow sometime in May. It’s not city gardeners who are really suffering; it’s ranchers, who have been losing sheep and cattle by the hundreds. Early spring is lambing and calving time, not a good time for blizzards.)

So—which season is this?

Here’s the scenario: You’ve been hearing the sound of raindrops on the roof for hours, when it suddenly stops.

Here’s the question: How should you interpret this phenomenon?

Here are the options: It’s possible (taking a broad view) that you have just been transported to Mars, where it doesn’t rain. It’s also possible, if unlikely, that you have gone suddenly deaf.

Leaving aside these somewhat farfetched possibilities, you might conclude that it has stopped raining. Seeing as how it’s June in the Northern Hemisphere, this would be the most obvious conclusion—and the correct one, except that there’s a hidden assumption underlying that statement: “It’s stopped raining” generally implies “It’s stopped precipitating.” And while the former statement is currently true, the latter is false.

In other words, my good friends, it has started snowing.

This is the lounge where Kate lay

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Yesterday was warm and so dry that by the time you finished hanging clothes at one end of a clothes line, you could start taking them down at the other end. I know, because I hung out the first laundry on the line that Steve had put up that morning.

Today, we get this:



which has inspired this:

Hail Damage: Potato double reprise

Several days ago I left you hanging, or tried to, but perhaps a more aggressive approach would have worked better, viz:

    So now I knew that, thank goodness, I didn’t need to dig up my damaged potatoes. Or did I? (scary music)

To recap:  My last post contained the research results I’d found after a hail storm devastated my potatoes in July. According to several experts who’d conducted several studies, potatoes damaged earlier in the season recovered more completely, and had better yields, than those that were damaged later. This was a major relief to me, as it meant I could leave my potatoes, all of them fairly young, in the ground, and they’d continue to grow, albeit slowly.

Dee of Red Dirt Ramblings had suggested, quite reasonably, that I might want to get those potatoes out of the ground forthwith, but since this research indicated otherwise, I proceeded to a gleeful celebration, declaring that she was “wrong, wrong, wrong.” Now, that’s the sort of categorical declaration that in any tragedy would be recognized as hubris, and like pride, it goes before a fall.

Bare-Naked Potato Stems: advice needed--

Here's my potato patch, the morning after the hail storm:

You'll have to take my word for it that two days ago it looked quite bright and bushy-tailed in a potato-patchy sort of way. Looking at that patch last week, one could believe that some potatoes, even in this age of slippery values,  retained a strong sense of purpose in their potato-hood. Proud to be potatoes, they seemed enthusiastic about this business of producing little potatoes.

But now look at it.

Anyone got any idea what to do with a potato patch that looks like this? They were just about to flower. I've mulched the bed heavily to protect any potatoes from heat (once the ice melts, that is.) (Maybe a course of lecures on the work-ethic of potatoes? I'll ask Bush for his post-Katrina action plan; that should help.)

There were plenty of small pine bits about for mulching, so that part was easy. I thought I'd wait and see if there's any sign of life from these stems. I'm inclined to leave the plants that sprout new leaves and yank any that just keel over and give up the ghost, to keep them from rotting in the ground. There are potatoes; I checked.

Does anyone have any actual information or experience that bears on this denuded potato-stem situation? Relevant moral or work-ethic lectures also welcome.

Post-garden post: Lettuce, anyone?

I’m going to open a restaurant.

 

 

Customer: So—what are you serving for lunch today?
Me: Well, we have shredded lettuce, torn lettuce, lettuce julienne, and mangled lettuce.
Customer: And the soup?
Me: Lettuce puree.
Customer: Hmm.
Me: And make up your mind quick, because it’s all going to start rotting in about five minutes!

I expect an enthusiastic, upscale clientel.