Weather or Not

Imagination & Place Press seeks submissions for an anthology on weather, a subject much on my mind this month. Here in Northeast WA we've yet to see a day where the temperature has hit 80 degrees. The average date for the first 80 degree day is May 12. We're over a month late, and I'm guessing we've had fewer than a dozen days where we even got up to 70.

Ken and I moved here because he wanted to live where there were four seasons, in proper order, he claimed. He'd lived in Reno, where the seasons jumped around...snow could fall in every month but August. And we'd lived in Silver Spring, MD, where some years we'd have a winter that seemed to last just three weeks.

In the past few years here, though, winter has encroached on both fall and spring...this past year or two it seemed to last for five months. Summers have been so cool, they're almost nonexistent. Autumn last year stuck around for about two weeks...the first snow fell before the last leaf did. So some say we now have two seasons, winter and sprall, a seven month stretch of spring/fall.

I've just read Bill McKibbon's Eaarth, so wonder if our traditional seasons ever will return. Lots to think about while I begin to explore my perceptions of weather linked to imagination and place.

It's been raining intermittently today, so my pastures will remain unmown until tomorrow. The grass out there is lushly thick and thigh high. Natty hid from me in it yesterday afternoon. During the one brief break today, I captured some of the flowers in my yard before they fade. Here's color, color everywhere, just as Ken used to say he wanted to see. The daffodils are gone, but the iris have taken their place, and the Asian lilies will be coming along soon...and of course by late July and August, the zinnias.

Followed by five months of shades of white.