Island Life: And The Seasons Turn

Wasn’t it just summer a minute ago?

I was going to go even farther and say, What happened to fall? We’ve gone straight to winter!, but that’s not quite true.

Yes, I did have to pull out socks a few weeks ago. (Socks!) And just this week, on my mailbox walk, I deployed my red rubber rainboots and my warm gloves. (Gloves!!) And yes, we’ve had a couple big wind-and-rainstorms blow through, dumping cedar and fir needles all over the garden and into the pond, and rotting the roses and the dahlias…

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But I haven’t forgotten that it actually does snow, and freeze, here in the real winter.

Even so, brr! It does seem like it changed fast. We had a very cold winter, followed by what we euphemistically call a ‘late spring’ (i.e. it rained till freakin’ July), then a very hot (for us) and dry (for us) summer, and I was just getting used to that when all of a sudden–socks!

The asters are loving it, though.

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I miss barbecuing. I didn’t get my full allotment of barbecuing this summer, because once it got so hot (for us) and dry (for us), the county promptly issued a burn ban–specifically listing backyard charcoal barbecues. Yeah, we’re isolated enough that I probably could have gotten away with it…but if the forest was dry enough to merit a ban, I didn’t want to be the jerk who burned our island down. Or even our house.

The burn ban got lifted just as soon as the weather turned, alas. So we put the barbecue away for the winter.

There’s a rule about that, right? You can’t wear socks to barbecue? Either way, I didn’t want to.

But I kind of feel like we got cheated out of summer…even though we also spent mumbledy-mumble hundreds of dollars on our water bill for a couple months there, just keeping the garden alive.

Even on the non-rainy days, there’s a definite chill in the air. And the days are growing dramatically shorter, too. I actually love this about living so far north (though my friend who lives above the Arctic Circle laughs at this, how undramatic our shift is compared with hers): I love the looooong bright days of summer and the looooong cozy nights of winter, I love how noticeable the change is. Already it’s dark in the morning when I wake up, and just this week I’ve shifted my afternoon walk back from five-thirty or so to three or so.

Five-thirty will be totally dark, soon. It’s five-thirty as I write these words, and it’s noticeably gloomy.

It’s a good thing we got all that firewood. We’ve even made decent progress on stacking it! I’d show you a picture, but it’s all under an ugly tarp…because rain…

Brr. Time to go throw another piece on the fire!