Cold without Frost

Weather: Snowed Monday. About a week ago the weather service hinted at the coming change of seasons when it suggested the storm was being driven by the jet stream rather than the hurricanes in the Pacific. It didn’t say that exactly, but that’s what I understood to be the definition of summer and winter.

Hurricanes are still forming off the western coast of México, but those northern winds are directing the waters from Vincente and Willa into southern Texas.

We did get some residual rain late in the afternoon Tuesday, and winds on Wednesday.

Last useful rain: 10/16. Week’s low: 29 degrees F. Week’s high: 66 degrees F in the shade.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, silver lace vine, sweet peas, Maximilian sunflowers, chrysanthemums

What’s blooming in my yard: Calamintha, chocolate flowers, blanket flowers, Sensation cosmos, African marigolds

What’s blooming outside the walls and fences: Bindweed, greenleaf five eyes, chamisa, senecio

What’s red or turning red and orange: Sand cherries, spirea, snowball, Virginia creeper leaves; Russian thistle stems

What’s yellow or turning yellow and orange: Sweet cherry, peach, apricot, pasture roses, cottonwoods, catalpa, globe and weeping willows, skunk bush, caryopteris, grape, milkweed, Maximilian sunflower, goldenrod, daylily leaves

Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum

Tasks: Monday I passed people who obviously had planned to work outside before the snow started falling a little after 7 am. One was loading tree limbs that had been cut to make room for a trailer. He was standing beside his truck warming his hands. Two younger men were cutting the tops of ornamental grass. When I passed them, they two were taking a break to warm their hands.

I took advantage of the clouds on Wednesday to cut winterfat in the afternoon.

Animal sightings: Small brown birds, geckos, sidewalk ants

Weekly update: Monday’s cold did not bring frost; the snow landed on leaves after 7 am, and soon melted. Plants sped up their preparations for winter, especially the purple asters which went out of bloom. Almost none of the so-called weeds are still blooming in my yard.

Cultivated plants responded differently. Those classed as cool-weather bloomers, like roses and sweet peas, continued their late flowering. The annuals grown from seed, like the Sensation cosmos and African marigolds, apparently were able to stay warm enough to stay alive.

Some shrubs, like the sand cherries, turned color long ago, and others like the choke cherry are bare. But many others, like the cottonwood, haven’t begun to slow down their metabolisms enough to lose much color.

Notes on photographs: All pictures taken 19 October 2018 after two mornings when temperatures fell to 31, but before they day they went down to 29.

1. Blanket flower (Gaillardia aristata) grown from seed; this was the second or third year for ths particular plant.

2. Perennial sweet peas (Lathyrus latifolia). They went out of bloom in August and started blooming again the first of October. They picked this location themselves.

3. African marigold (Tagetes erecta). The seeds were planted in mid-May, began growing after rains in July, and started blooming mid-September. They’re in a sheltered area between the black locust to the west, Maximilian sunflowers to the south, and wooden fence to the east.