It’s fall, y’all!
The leaves are turning, daytimes are much shorter, and a chill is in the air.
What a change from just a month ago!
Our backyard lawn is recovering. Last month it had almost no grass (see around tent in the image below):
Here’s how it looks now, post-mowing…
Now there’s green popping up, thanks to the recent atmospheric river that overtook our region. Refreshing. We need more water but I hope it will fall at night, like in Camelot! Fat chance of that, but if wishes were fishes…
HIBERNATION NEARS
As the days get shorter and the nights longer (at our latitude, there’s an enormous 8-hour daytime difference between June 21st (our longest day of the year here) and December 21st (our shortest) (read * at the bottom of this post), I find myself leaning in the direction of hibernation. I get sleepy at dusk, and usually sleep until dawn. (Sometimes I get up halfway through the night and piddle around, writing or cleaning or something, if I can’t sleep straight through.)
The goats are quickly deveolping their thicker winter coats. I will need to cover the outdoor spigots soon to make sure they don’t freeze up and burst this winter. I’ve winterized the goat pen (put a heater in the water trough and will plug it in at the first sign of a freezing night; added straw to their shed, clipped their hooves so they don’t develop foot rot during the rainy season ahead — I have to clip their hooves several times a year, not just during the winter, etc.)
I will add a heat lamp to the henhouse high overhead on super cold nights to keep them cozy. They will be able to get as close or as far away as they want to from it, because I have a lot of roosts at varying heights inside the henhouse.
Yeah, t’is the seaon to start thinking about what winter will bring, and these nippy fall days are a good reminder.
I went out to sit in my recliner in the sunshine yesterday and had to move it about every 30 minutes because the fall-time shadows extend their reach far faster than summertime ones did, and unless I was under the direct rays of the sun yesterday, I was freaking cold. THAT was a huge change from just a couple weeks ago. So, fall has fallen. It’s here, pretty much in the blink of an eye.
But it is lovely. I’m not complaining. It’s breathtakingly beautiful! These smartphone images don’t really do it justice, but I had to try.
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* To show you what Seattle-Tacoma existence is like between summer and winter: On June 21st this year, sunrise was at 5:09 a.m. and sunset was at 9:12 p.m., so we greceived 16 hours and three minutes of sunshine that day. (And it was all sunshine. We’ve had another drier-than-ever-before summer in this region. In sharp contrast, on December 21st this year, sunrise will be at 7:52 a.m. and sunset will be at 4:22 p.m., giving us an eight hour and 30 minute day.)
