Late change of the seasons
Nov. 16th, 2005 05:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
billeylerAlbuquerqueens are so starved for anything weather-like, that it was front page news yesterday that we were about to have our first hard freeze of the season. Average first freeze is Nov 1...this time it hit the wee hours of this morning, Nov 16. So much for our late late late growing season.
In the 24 1/2 years I've lived here, I don't think I noticed the change after the freeze quite as much as I did today. The mulberry trees lost ALL their leaves in one huge kerflop, after the mercury dipped to 26.5 this morning. The streets in this older part of the city are filled with golden leaves. The cosmos and the vinca, which were valiantly blooming away are all now shrivelled and desiccated. What a change a few hours can make! The Joseph's Coat roses look pretty sad, with the saggy late season buds, but the Iceberg roses seem to be still perky. There an orange wildflower that's still game after the frost...some type of gazania, maybe.
This year, I'd REALLY love to see a good snowstorm here. We've got 3 months to squeeze it in, now that if feels like Winter. Dry, yes, but still winterish.
I know Danny will be firing up the upstairs fireplace this week!
In the 24 1/2 years I've lived here, I don't think I noticed the change after the freeze quite as much as I did today. The mulberry trees lost ALL their leaves in one huge kerflop, after the mercury dipped to 26.5 this morning. The streets in this older part of the city are filled with golden leaves. The cosmos and the vinca, which were valiantly blooming away are all now shrivelled and desiccated. What a change a few hours can make! The Joseph's Coat roses look pretty sad, with the saggy late season buds, but the Iceberg roses seem to be still perky. There an orange wildflower that's still game after the frost...some type of gazania, maybe.
This year, I'd REALLY love to see a good snowstorm here. We've got 3 months to squeeze it in, now that if feels like Winter. Dry, yes, but still winterish.
I know Danny will be firing up the upstairs fireplace this week!
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Albuquerqueens
Date: 2005-11-17 12:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-17 04:53 pm (UTC)I love your description of the trees and flowers - it must be quite beautiful. Sounds like something I'd like to photograph.
We in Chicago don't get much "golden" here as a rule, but until the big blow over the weekend many of the trees were a beautiful golden yellow - mostly because of the drought. And they're tiny pesky little leaves that won't rake - you have to sweep them up or vacuum them up with a lawn mower.
The reason we're far less poetic is because we rarely have Spring - or so it seems. Rather, the gray skies and damp grunge carries on sometime until the middle of April (sometimes later!) and then one morning the birds are "singin' they tiny little 'eads owf!" and Spring has Sprung. The early Spring flowers pop up sometimes literally overnight, and then in a weeks or so all the trees are in leaf and all the pretty men (and too many women) are out in their shorts and tank tops running to or from some thing or another. That's summer and it lasts for approximately five months.
We have Fall, but usually in the form of two or three rainy blustery days when the leaves that have gradually been changing colors for weeks (usually, we think, due to drought rather than to the machnications of the equinox) are blown everywhere, covering the neatly parked cars and clogging up the storm sewer drains. Then it starts getting cold and snowing and that's winter which lasts for approximately seven months.
Those are basically the seasons and their changes in Chicago. We don't have mountains and our seasons are barfy, but other than that I really love this town.