The Last Hurrah

25 September 2012
9:10 PM

Sunrise at	7:45 AM	in direction	91°	East
Sunset at	7:38 PM	in direction	269°	West

Duration of day: 11 hours, 53 minutes (6 minutes, 37 seconds shorter than yesterday)

The photo does not do it justice.  The shrub was a
brilliant red

This is the time of year that I cling to each colorful image in the landscape, hoarding it to get me by until next spring.  The hills were golden, then one day a few trees were bare.  The next half the mountain was the brown of trees gone bare.  The following day little gold remained.  But there was still some color.  I noticed the hardy rose bush in front of our deck is sending up another flower and the Nasturtiums and Johnny Jump Ups have not yet given in to frost. 

One tree clinging to green while its
neighbors revel in fall finery

The end of last week and the weekend were exceptionally warm, in the 60s F.  And with the dryness in the air, Denali was visible on the Southwest horizon.  I did not have my camera with me, so an iPhone photo has to do, but there it is.  But late Sunday night, I could feel cool air creeping in around the windows where we are waiting to complete the drywall wrap after the retrofit.  The next day it did not reach 50F and was freezing over night in the river valley.  Snow is predicted for this coming weekend.

Highest peak in north America just visible right of center.

I finished cutting up the remainder of this year's kindling as well as what I am curing for next year.  Gary and I got two more loads of birch from Bob Zachel, split it and covered it.  I will stack it this week or next.  We need to swap our road tires for snow tires and I forgot to call the service station today to make the appointment.  The earliest is probably a week from Friday, so I am trusting it won't snow too much before then.  This is an early snow, and the fireweed prediction scheme - 6 weeks after the fireweed flowers turn to fuzz - has been right on.  I expected Snow the end of September by that indicator and here we are.

All the plants that are wintering over have been brought in and either gather light from the plant lights downstairs, or from the diminishing sunlight.  I will need to bring up a couple of hanging plant lights at the end of October to extend daylight for a few plants up here.  I will do that through January and stop in early February when we have 7 hours of full sunlight (nearly 10 hours of sunlight and twilight).  Gary needs to remove the remaining work bench activities out of the garage so I can park the car in it next week.

Later I will put plastic up over the atrium door to the north and one of our doors on the main floor - to reduce cold drafts at any temperature below -10F.  There is a more elegant and simple way, vertical honeycomb shades.  We have one installed on one of the doors on the main level, but have not had the ready cash to do the same for the others.  So, I make do with the plastic.

All in all, we are ready for the advancing winter.  In the meantime, I absorb each brush of color in the landscape.