Desperation In Vermont Garden As Winter Sets In

My attemps at fall cleanup and digging away rocks
and clay for a new perennial bed carried on yesterday
in St. Albans, Vermont despite snow and a
temperature of about 30 degrees. 

Winter always arrives despite the fact that nobody is ever really ready for it.

Yesterday was a case in point as I struggled to work on my St. Albans, Vermont gardens and property.   Autumn yard projects are never truly done. We gardeners always want to do more before winter really sets in.

The forecast for Sunday around my place was for partly to mostly cloudy skies, with temperatures in the mid-30s. No mention of precipitation.

Not exactly gorgeous, but nice enough to get some raking done, as long as I dressed fairly warmly.

As late morning progressed, the sky grew darker. I stepped outside to get to work. Was that a snowflake?

Yep. It ended up snowing all afternoon. Not heavily, but constantly. It started accumulating.

So much for the raking. But I soldiered on, putting up fencing around some evergreens to keep the winter deer away, and cleaning up the autumn debris that had accumulated especially heavy near the cedars and pines.   I ended up raking a combination of leaves and snow in a tarp to be carted away

The ground wasn't yet frozen, so I  turned to digging up some rocky, clay soil to make room for eventual perennial beds.  As I worked, the temperature dropped, and the soil started to freeze, sticking to the shovel, clinging in clumps. That idea stopped working.

Especially since there was now about a half inch of snow on the ground.

So I started hauling the debris from the trees we cut down to the burn pile. As I did that, I heard a sickening crunch on the road just below my house. The hill had iced up. A pickup truck spun out and hit the guardrail. I went down and checked on the driver. She was OK. She'd already called the police, so I went back to work.

This is Vermont, after all. Light snow and a late afternoon temperature of 30 degrees is perfectly normal weather for the end of November. With lakes still ice-free and the ground largely unfrozen, it doesn't take much for the early winter atmosphere to take up moisture and release it as snow.  Often unexpectedly.

In this case, all it took was a very weak cold front sinking south from Canada. The snowflakes flew down from the gray November overcast. The cold front gave Burlington, Vermont its first measurable snow of the season. A paltry 0.2 inches.

Often by now, the ground is frozen hard. We should  have had several inches of snow, at least by now. It's been mild.

We've been blessed by a November that will be among the warmest on record in Vermont. Precipitation is well below normal. I, ,and my fellow Vermonters, should have had oodles of time to get our fall chores done.

This autumn, I did manage to do everything that HAS to get done. The garlic, roses and sensitive flowers are safely mulched. The raised beds are cleaned up. More daffodil and hyacinth bulbs have been planted. The perennial beds are cut back and neatened up. The most visible parts of my property are raked and tidied, thanks to that unexpectedly pleasant November.

But you always want to get more done before winter shuts you down. Which explains why I was out there, in the falling snow and the gathering afternoon darkness, trying to get more done. You might think I was crazy, but I think a lot of us do such things.

Yard work is one way to imagine we are fending off the inevitable winter.

In Vermont, November Comes In October

The joy of October is over, and dark November
looms over Vermont. Here are some leaves from
newly barren trees in Burlington, Vermont. 

November arrived here in Vermont over the past couple of days.

I know, I know, it's October 30. But what I'm talking about is the mood of the month, which doesn't line up with the calendar. I think that's true of almost any time of year.

October is bright and beautiful. November is funereal.

Autumn - the part involving brilliant foliage, bright sunshine and hordes of tourists, this year lasted longer than it usually does up here. All thanks to a record warm September and bursts of mild weather earlier this month.

On Sunday, October 25, I took a drive from my home in St. Albans, in the northwestern corner of the state down to West Rutland, in the southwest to visit family.

I stuck pretty much to the "tropical" Champlain Valley, or at least tropical compared to the rest of the state. The foliage usually hangs on longer here than in the more mountainous parts of Vermont.

Still, I was stunned by how pretty the landscape still was. Usually by October 25, the foliage is gone except for some leftover pockets of brilliant birch or larch or maybe part of one or two particularly vigorous sugar maples.

But on Sunday, the foliage was still gorgeous, especially along reliable scenic Route 30 through rural Cornwall, Sudbury and Whiting.

Of course this state of affairs couldn't last forever. On Wednesday, a gusty rainstorm - fueled in part by Hurricane Patricia, arrived to darken the sky to deep gray November hue and start stripping the remaining leaves from the trees.

If I had to pick an exact moment November arrived for me here in Vermont, it was at 12:58 p.m. yesterday.

I was working for a client, cleaning up their garden. It had been quite a mild morning ahead of a cold front, with intervals of sun interspersing with fitful bursts of rain.

At 12:58, that cold front arrived with a volatile sky, another burst of rain, and a strong westerly gust of wind that set off a blizzard of leaves from the trees that still had foliage. The temperature plunged. I was sweating in my t-shirt a few minutes earlier. Now I was shivering.

There's probably no two months in Vermont with such opposing personalities as October and November.

October is a wild celebration of color and lingering warmth. November is somber and gray and quiet and dead as we button down for our traditional long, cold winter.

Of course, it's not like November is all doom and gloom. You can still  get some sort of decent days. In fact, there are signs an Indian Summer might sneak into Vermont next week.

Yesterday, I gave up at the client's house amid the rain and wind and chill.

I went home to St. Albans. The showers stopped. As strong west winds peeled the dead leaves from the poplar trees, I rushed to plant daffodil, hyacinth and crocus bulbs in my yard. You want to prepare for the joy of spring, because you know it will be a long, cold winter.  You want to spend the winter anticipating the joyful return to color and life.

Night fell. Now that the leaves are largely down, the view of northern New York State from my hillside property opened up, no longer blocked by foliage.

To the southwest, I could see the Lights of Dannamora in the distance, set against the Adirondack foothills, which all sounds so romantic. But Dannamora is a prison, and what we see is the big patch of lights that helps guards keep watch on the inmates.

After the freedom and joy of summer and autumn, we Vermonters - like me - are preparing for a sort of prison, too.

Our prison isn't necessarily grim, like Dannamora.  But the upcoming winter is a restrictive prison of wearing heavy coats, gingerly driving and walking on ice, and fretting about how we're going to pay the heating bill.

This jail sentence will last until April, when some of those crocuses and daffodils I planted as November loomed come back, to return color to our Vermont world.

The Moment Vermont Finally Flipped Over To Spring

Just a few days ago, on Thursday, winter reasserted
 itself in Vermont. Pretty but dreaded at the same time.  

Where I live in Vermont, spring usually comes frustratingly late and reluctantly, and that sure was the case this year.

Oh sure, we've managed to get a few springlike days during March and the first part of April, but mostly it was a continuation of chilly weather, occasional snows, and cold north winds.

Almost every year, you can pinpoint the moment, almost to the minute, when Vermont finally flips over to spring.

In my view, at least, this moment happened just before sunset on Friday.

The long anticipation of spring reached a crescendo Thursday when we woke up to encouraging forecasts for subsequent days. But we also woke up to two or three inches of fresh wet snow that fell overnight.

The snow, clinging to every branch on the trees was pretty, but come on! We've had enough snow.

The rest of Thursday was a continuation of bland late winter. It warmed up enough in the afternoon to melt most of the new snow, but the sky stayed dark, the wind kept blowing. It was damp, and underfoot mud season was in full swing.

Walking across the yard felt like an adventure into the deepest, darkest swamp.

Friday morning brought more disappointment for spring lovers. Forecasts had said it would warm up. Instead, it was raw, windy and cold. Sprinkles of rain filtered down, freezing in some areas and glistening like a sparkly, mean icy joke on the trees.

As the day wore on, the wind kept howling, and the temperature stubbornly stayed low into the early afternoon. But was that a rumble of thunder in that gusty noontime shower that passed by? Thunder is a sign of spring, isn't it?

Late in the afternoon, I finished work, and put on my jacket to leave and head home. I walked out the door and it was suddenly mild. The jacket was suddenly stuffy and uncomfortable. I got rid of it.

Much better.  

Then on Friday, after winds stayed cold
and raw most of the day, the air abrutly
warmed and theses sun rays over Lake Champlain
in Vermont seemed to finally herald spring's arrival.  

I arrived home a little before sunset.

It was still kind of balmly out. The breeze, which had been stiff and cold all week, felt like a was a warm embrace from an old friend.

I noticed the first tentative heads of daffodil greens poking out of the mud next to the shed. Those daffodils were apparently just getting the memo, too.

The dark clouds seemed to be parting over still frozen Lake Champlain, west of my house.

Suddenly, the sun broke through over the lake,  and these glorious warm rays spread out lovingly over the Champlain Valley. Sort of like a second coming.

On TV, the weather guys and gals were promising a week of mild temperatures. Those beautiful sun rays over Lake Champlain might have been happening at sunset, but this was clearly the long awaited  dawn of one of the most welcome springs I can remember in Vermont.

A Sign of Fall Valley Fog

Sunday morning dawned mostly clear and cool in Vermont and other places in the northeastern United States.

Fog in Burlington last March
Morning fog is actually most
common in late summer and fall.  

Some valleys, especially near rivers or other bodies of water, were socked in with fog, however.

The fog would burn off by midmorning in all places, so the rest of today is going to be nice.

The areas of fog are one sign of autumn.

The ground and the water have been soaking up the summer heat for months now. Nights are starting to get a little cooler as we approach autumn.

The cool nighttime air comes in contact with the warm, moist ground. The moisture combined with the cool air condenses, and you get fog in the valleys.

This morning fog will now be quite common in the calm of many early mornings now into October.

On the bright side, if you wake up to dense fog, chances are the day will be gorgeous.  The morning fog, which always burns off as the sun gets higher in the sky,  usually comes when there is a high pressure system nearby or overhead. And high pressure usually brings sunny weather.