Black for Winter

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First snow of the year on the Peaks Winter Park Colorado USA

Winter's coming!

Finally some sunny days

I guess I need to be grateful for sunshine, if not warmth. Last year by mid-February, I'd already planted my onion sets, and sown some early winter greens, lettuce, and peas. But every year is different, and climate change, in my view (and predicted by climate change models), is definitely bringing more changeable weather, especially in the spring.

My fall-planted garlic is just waiting for some warmth to start storing the carbohydrates that will fuel clove production in late spring. And, I'm anxious to get my onions and leeks in the ground.

And I'm anxious to get the raised beds set up in the mountains for our summer garden.

My gardening companion is not sympathetic when I think about my container plants that have succumbed to the extreme winter weather. He says that I need fewer containers to worry about over the summer! Hmmph. I suppose he's right, but I am sorry to lose the thymes, Spanish lavender, sedums, and santolina. I'll see what emerges as warmer weather returns.

Snow

This evening the 'drumbeat' of the forecast materialized, and we've had several inches of fluffy, damp snow and it's still coming. This is most unusual for us -- we normally have nice winter days alternating with cold rainy days in February in the Upstate of South Carolina. But this year, with El Nino and altered wind patterns, has been entirely different.

This evening's snow is wet, heavy, and slushy and will freeze overnight to a harder consistency, making the roads slippery, and keeping us folks unused to snow and ice inside and not venturing forth. The quietness has already descended.

I'll need to go out briefly to post a cancellation notice for a program Saturday morning -- I've called all the registered participants, but there might be some northerly sort of person who might appear. But I guess I've lived in the Southern U.S. for long enough to share the aversion to snowy and icy travel. I'm only a mile away from campus, but I wouldn't want to drive much more than that!

Cold winter air

It's remarkable how clear the winter air was as we returned home. Perhaps the absence of Vietnam's tropical humidity and hazy air (not actually that bad for the developing world) makes the sparkling crispness more noticeable.

We were glad everything was fine at home and in the garden -- no fallen trees, etc. Amazingly, my lettuce, collard, mache, and kale flats look great, although frozen solid. Hmmm. We don't normally have frozen soil for very long, but last winter, and now this year seem to be trying to confound the trend towards climate change (perhaps instead of global warming, we have much more erratic weather, to be sure).

A wonderful aspect of traveling in a 12-year growing season climate was seeing what was going on in vegetable fields and in the markets. Photos to come -- I downloaded them this afternoon, but they await sorting, and post-jet lag choices...

Winter

Because we often travel during winter break, our relatively mild winters in the Southeastern US seem even shorter. We're fortunate to be able to travel in December; without family obligations (our families are far-flung and independent at this point), it's an excellent time to visit many parts of the world as we can.

During our academic winter break from early December to early January, we've traveled to Mexico, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, and Costa Rica in the Americas, Thailand, Laos, Northern Vietnam, and India in Asia, and Tanzania and Zanzibar in Africa, as well as going to Italy, France and Great Britain, over the years.

All have been wonderful trips and we're grateful that we were able to take them.

But one of the non-traveling pluses has been that we leave just as winter descends (not very heavily in our part of the world), return in early January, and by February and March have quite a few periodic mild days, which are really quite spring-like, and we're back to warm weather.

So, we're fortunate to escape the 'worst' of what our Southeastern winters offer; we're totally wimpy compared to so many of you that have much more harsh winters to cope with!

Early snow in Colorado

First snow of the 2009/10 ski season on the ski runs in Colorado today - Winter's Coming - time to book your next USA skiiing holiday! Visit http://www.chalets-usa.co.uk/ for catered chalets, self-catered accommodation, hotels and more in Vail, Breckenridge, Winter Park, Beaver Creek & Steamboat Springs.