For those who tend gardens fall and winter are times to reflect upon the success and failures of the past season. The first big storm of fall arrived in the Puget Sound on 11-11-11. This storm was part of a storm that hit Alaska this past week. My friend Geov Parrish put it this way in an email correspondence to me:
I guess the weather today is the dregs of a huge, once-in-a-lifetime storm that hit Alaska a couple days ago. It was particularly bad because the Bering Sea would normally be frozen over by this time of year, but thanks to climate change, that's no longer the case, so the open water fed the development of the storm. Yet another connection to CC our liberal media can't be bothered making.
Overall we have had a magnificent fall prior to this recent weather pattern. Many days full of sunshine and blue skies for which to enjoy an array of trees showing off their yellow, red, and orange leaves. I have talked with many other gardeners and they echo my thoughts that we are about 2 weeks behind the normal time of leaf drop for our area. This is probably due to our very long wet spring and coolish summer.
In my own garden I continued to harvest tomatoes into October and am still harvesting lettuce that was planted in August.
November was much drier than normal, but now the rains are here with a vengeance. Still, fall clean up continues. Summer perennials are cut back and divided as needed. Leaves are raked up or left to decompose. Time to start perusing gardening books, magazines and seed catalogs.
