The march of the Seasons

This is the third consecutive morning with a temperature below 60F at sunrise; today is was a most pleasant 54F. The UPS driver yesterday noted that up on the higher elevations of the Blue Ridge Parkway, trees were beginning to acquire their warm autumnal tones. The color of the light has altered as well, to that thick, liquidy amber/yellow. All of this in just a few days after a major cold front blew over the farm. And at nearly the same date as it occurred last year...

On the bad news side, the farm is still parched. Ten days ago there were two mornings of dense fog, indicating a plentitude of water vapor in the atmosphere and yet, all that the clouds that day could produce as rain was 1/100th and 6/100ths of an inch. Last Saturday 1/3rd of an inch of rain fell in a brief time span and the temperature dropped about 14 degrees in twenty minutes - that's a cold front, my dear readers! A friend in the excavation business is building a 25 foot deep pond about twenty miles east of the farm and noted that even at that depth, there is no moisture in the soil. This is not good news. The summer of 2011 was a close approximation of the summer of 2010 - if the similarities continue, then rain should be arriving soon (although the five day forecast is still dry). Let us hope.