Monthly Archives: June 2009

Blogging pause

Friends and readers all,

You may have noticed that posts have been erratic in recent weeks. This makes it official: expect more of the same. Planning my sister’s memorial has taken most of my emotional energy, and working the gardens most of my time, to say nothing of my physical energy; between the two there’s not much left. Yesterday I arrived in Toronto, and tomorrow I start driving my parents to Maine for the gathering. I may not manage to post anything until after I return, in about two weeks.

I’ve also been a lousy blogging buddy recently, my visits to others’ blogs having dropped catastrophically. Don’t break out the champagne yet, though; I miss you all and promise I’ll be back to plague you in the near future.

Be well, and may your gardens thrive. See you all in a couple of weeks.

–Kate

Crazy Weather

Corn seedlings

I keep planning to write a post about yard work, of which there has been plenty, but the weather conspires against me. It’ll warm up nicely, I’ll take a deep breath and relax; well, winter’s over at last, I’ll be able to get out into the garden soon… And two days later, wham, six to twelve inches of snow. Even when the temperatures rise, it takes days for all that to melt.

(One area in northern Montana got four feet of snow sometime in May. It’s not city gardeners who are really suffering; it’s ranchers, who have been losing sheep and cattle by the hundreds. Early spring is lambing and calving time, not a good time for blizzards.)

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Ups and Downs

PN visit A couple of weeks ago I stopped by Planet Natural* for some manure, and look what happened. The place is dangerous. (I did get the manure, but it was too heavy to haul onto the lawn for a photo.) The bamboo compost bucket (as seen on ComposterConnection!) was a gift from Eric, bless him, who kept pressing me to buy a bigger basket.

Him: It’s for a good cause!
Me: I don’t need a bigger basket.
Him: The proceeds buy eyeglasses for blind Indians in Arizona! Or something.
Me: Blind people don’t need eyeglasses, Eric.
Him: You know what I mean.
Me: I don’t need a bigger basket!
Him: Oh, all right.

As he went off he may have been muttering something about how I shouldn’t blame him if my conscience bothered me, but I wasn’t sure.

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So—which season is this?

Snow in June

Here’s the scenario: You’ve been hearing the sound of raindrops on the roof for hours, when it suddenly stops.

Here’s the question: How should you interpret this phenomenon?

Here are the options: It’s possible (taking a broad view) that you have just been transported to Mars, where it doesn’t rain. It’s also possible, if unlikely, that you have gone suddenly deaf.

Leaving aside these somewhat farfetched possibilities, you might conclude that it has stopped raining. Seeing as how it’s June in the Northern Hemisphere, this would be the most obvious conclusion—and the correct one, except that there’s a hidden assumption underlying that statement: “It’s stopped raining” generally implies “It’s stopped precipitating.” And while the former statement is currently true, the latter is false.

In other words, my good friends, it has started snowing.

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