Sunday, October 25, 2009

October 25, 2009

Crazy Mountain Weather

Where we live, 5 miles north of Bozeman, it can snow just about any month of the year, though it’s rare in July and August. This year, we almost got through September without significant snowfall. But on the last day of the month it came, wet and heavy. Leaves were still on the trees, each one a glove-like catchment. Boughs bent, boughs broke. It melted, of course, and then temperatures dropped into the teens. The suddenly freed leaves froze. It was as if we jumped from summer to winter, skipping autumn altogether. Indeed, the aspens never had a chance to turn the mountainsides yellow. The aspen leaves in our yard are a dark purple, some almost black. The color of death.


All the doom and gloom talk about the weather changed a week later, when temperatures rose to a more normal daytime range in the 50s. The sun returned, too. Some nights temps are just above freezing, other nights just below. But I miss the colors from our aspen, maples, and contoneasters.


I pulled my last tomato plants just before the big snowstorm and am letting them ripen in a cardboard box in the garage. I taste them every few days, and after a few weeks some have gone soft, others are coming along just fine. None tastes quite as good as those that ripened on the vine in late August and early September.


Did I mention the October wind that blew down off the mountains, pegging the dial at 50-60 mph for nearly a full day and night? In our yard it took one mature aspen and a lot of branches. At least it carried away a lot of those purple-black leaves that were starting to bum me out.


C’est la vie in the Rockies.

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