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

[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.