winters

I’ve lived in a number of places: Philadelphia, Denver, San Francisco, LA, Palm Springs, and now Albuquerque. I've learned about the weather and seasons in each place very well. Each has very different winters.

In Philadelphia, fall begins right on-time in September, with classic autumn leaves, and a distinct change in the temperatures. You can count on winter settling in with crisp temperatures by late November, and really getting underway in December. Snow is a given, although more erratic in modern days than historically. I always thought of winter as beginning with the first snow, or when the color fades from the trees. The beginning of the end of winter is when the witch hazel blooms.

During the short period that I lived in Denver, I learned that winter comes in with a bang. In mid-September one day, it was a toasty 95 F. That night it snowed 8 inches. The leaves on the trees didn’t turn colors that year: they were frozen in their tracks. I don’t know if that happened every year. Although sunny and relatively comfortable (if dressed for it), the winter stayed from that night onward. Nothing blooms in the winter.

In San Francisco, winter begins when the morning fog ends and the rain starts. Some years, it seems like the clouds roll in and it rains off and on until spring. Although some people consider rain to be the end of summer and the beginning of fall, the first rain is when winter begins for me. The rain soaks into the dry earth, and although the temperatures are not very low, the moisture soaks through wool and fleece, to chill the skin until the warmth of spring sunshine begins. Winter is when the camellia bloom, and begins when the paperwhites bloom.

LA winters begin when the temperature drops, and the smog becomes less intense so the eyes don’t burn when stepping out of the house. Winter begins the first day that a sweater is worn, and it is downright cold when a jacket must be worn. Winter is when the aloe bloom.

Palm Springs winters begin about mid-November, and is the first day that the sun shades don’t have to be put under the windshield. The daytime temperatures are below 110, by night time the temperature drops 40 degrees, and it gets cool enough to require a jacket at night. The winter annuals get planted and the golf courses get sheared and overplanted, the dust from the golf course scalping makes the air brown and the nose twitch. Winter begins when plants break out of their summer heat-dormancy and start to grow again.

In Albuquerque, winter begins when the window frame in my shower is encrusted with white hoar frost in the morning. It begins when the late blooming plants have their blossoms frozen, and the borderline plants turn brown or turn to ice mush. This year, it was the Salvia farinacea, the Salvia chamaedryoides and the Rosemary that had their blue blossoms frozen, the geraniums and the Salvia Mystic Spires turned to brown twigs, and the Agapanthus turned to green mush. Winter begins when the Crocus speciosus and the Osmanthus heterophyllus blooms.