Seasonal Change

[thanate]

The kids' books will tell you about nights getting longer and leaf colors and temperatures. Perhaps about birds flying south, or residents preparing for cold weather or hibernation. Insects that lay their eggs and die off, plants that set their seeds and die back. Fish swim to the bottom of the pond. All of which is valid and diagnostic, and you can even see some of it if you live in an apartment building with just a lonely tree or two at the edge of the parking lot. For most of us on the internet the human aspects of seasonal change don't have a lot to do with harvest cycles anymore.

Here, summer first subsides when it gets cool enough overnight that it's worth opening windows instead of leaving the air conditioning on all night. We're also hooked back into the school cycle.

There's reacquainting myself with my fall/winter wardrobe: which long-sleeve shirts are still in good shape, remembering scarves and sweaters and vests. Dredging the Megatherium's coat pile to find what is still long enough in the sleeves. Making her wear socks to school.

When it gets cool enough, pulling down the invasive vines that grew up while I was huddling in the air conditioning. Eventually the mosquitoes all die off.

Sorting out bird feeders: washing them, resticking fallen suction cups to the window (or this year, just putting up hooks on the frame.) I keep meaning to make/get a winter roost box. In the spring, it's bird houses instead.

Turning on the heat. Turning off the dehumidifier in the basement, eventually getting humidifiers set up in the bedrooms upstairs.

Daylight savings, now broken; so far as I am concerned, the point of daylight savings in the modern world is to minimize the amount of time it's necessary to get up before sunrise and the amount of time it gets light out before 5am, and the late return to real time has drastically cut into the first of these.

Hallowe'en, Thanksgiving, winter shopping madness & holidays of gift giving. Various festivals of light in the darkness.

The time when the water pipes cool enough that the amount of time it takes to heat a cup of tea changes, and I have to remember to press 2 minutes, and then 222, on the microwave instead of 99 seconds. This is usually slightly after the time when I find I want to add heavy whipping cream to some of my tea choices, which is a bit after changing over from cold-brew teas to ones I drink warm.

Time for baking and crock pot soups, followed by winter reading of cookbooks and garden books.

I hear the west coast has fire and smoke season, now; one more reason I still don't want to move to the SF area, even if they have less stupid summers than we do. (I have begun wondering if I should offer to send my brother respiration masks.)

What are your seasonal markers?

Comments

[sartorias]

I wear summer clothes year round. There are a few days here and there where I get to wear long sleeves. I own two gorgeous coats, but never get to wear them unless I go back east. Three, actually. One is forty years old. The newest one is five years old, the other closer to twenty. Looks brand new.

Mosquitos are fewer when we get the occasional cold night (cold as 48-50, once every four four five years it will briefly get down to the upper thirties). I never shut my windows, since our a/c broke and fixing it is way, way down the list of things we need but can't afford. Fans and water spray bottles are my go to. I sleep with a fan blowing on me all night. But I can drink tea in the morning now, whereas June through early November, it was far too hot.

I LOVE these days of long slanting light early darkness. the 21st December is depressing because it means the long climb to endless heat.

Since we're down to two inches of rain a year, if we're lucky, that isn't even part of a season.

[thanate]

Our house holds temperature well enough (after several rounds of re-insulating) that if the temperature differential is big enough it can work to open the windows & circulate air through the house overnight & then close everything up again during the day. This summer, tho, was two and a half months where it wasn't worth turning the a/c off because the moment we opened windows the humidity doubled. :(

I continue to say that if we have "sunreturn" we should also get to celebrate "sunGoAway" to sustain us against the coming summer with the promise that winter will come again. (I'm also reminded of Maggie Hogarth's comment about bouncing off the Pagan community in Florida because they were still celebrating the British Isles seasonal year.)

[sartorias]

I'm definitely up for SunGoAway!

[jazzfish]

If and when I live someplace without the persistent eight months of wintergrey, I would be happy to support SunGoAway!

[okrablossom]

This was wonderful. I'm not sure how I would answer but I appreciate your post giving me the chance to wonder.

[thanate]

Thank you, and feel free to come back if you think of anything.

It's the little stuff like tea water temperature and the humidifier/dehumidifier cycle that blindside me every year when suddenly the defaults change.

[pameladean]

White-throated sparrows in the spring, juncoes in the fall. The possible end of winter is announced by the black-capped chickadees calling, "Cheeeeseburger" and the cardinals wondering, "What cheer?" as they contemplate their mating territories. The advent of autumn is announced by geese consulting about their routes and the goldfinches taking off their party clothes and putting on olive-green drab.

Hiking season starts with the ephemerals and ends with fall color. Summer solstice sees the emergence of the most dragonflies, but there's a succession there as well. Dragonfly season is bookended by migrating green darners.

In October we worry about the hundred-and-two-year-furnace, in May or June about the variably-aged window air conditioners; in all seasons about the increasingly decaying combination storms and underlying double-sash windows.

Hot soup disappears in May or June, and cold soup makes an appearance in July and August.

Squirrels never stop much of anything, but their gnawing at the air conditioner accordions is a shoulder-season activity.

P.

[thanate]

Oh, squirrels.

I had to take out the screen from the window I put bird feeders on to keep the squirrels from climbing up it and leaving little holes. Now they've worked out how to jump to the hooks I put up at the top of the window frame, so the blue jays & mourning doves will have to suffer without a tray feeder this year.

[pameladean]

Oh, man, I sympathize. We had a feeder on a swing arm attached to the frame of an upstairs window. It was amazing to watch the cardinals and house sparrows bring their fledglings to eat there, just two or three feet from the glass. But the squirrels learned to jump from a not-that-nearby mulberry tree to the top of the feeder, making it swing wildly and bang into the storm window, so we had to take the feeder down. The birds still get their food from a tube feeder on the ground, but we can't see them so well now.

P.

[notyourwendy]

Summer to winter: bringing the houseplants (and their assorted accumulated pests) inside. Wool socks. The strong desire to bake. Going home at the same time as the crows - flocks of black birds overhead against the sunset. Rain for weeks at a time.

Winter to summer: flowers on the maple trees (don't trust the forsythias, they lie). Leaving the windows open at night. Restaurant patios being a reasonable option in the evening. Light in the sky until 10 PM.

[thanate]

Ah, yes, I had forgotten the house plants.

Even here we usually have the transition from a weather forecast that promises thunderstorms several times a week but never delivers to fall where it actually rains.

[notyourwendy]

I haven't lived on the top floor of anything for a long time, but now I do and I can hear the rain on the roof. I'm learning the shades of the sounds of rain. It doesn't always come down hard enough that I can hear it, but sometimes there's more water in the air than the persistent not-quite-mist-not-quite-umbrella-weather-constant-wet and we get a true downpour. After it's been raining steadily for a day or so, I miss the sound when it quits.

I'm once again whimping out of heading down to the beach for a winter storm King tide.