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What I do when it’s cold

   Written by on November 14, 2013 at 7:34 am

In the thirty minutes or so that passed during New Dog’s walk Tuesday morning, the clouds changed from fluffy, scattered and tinged red by the rising sun to filmy and gray and ghost-like. The sky had begun to darken by 7:30. For once, the forecasters were right: a cold front was moving in.

logo-A Walk in the GardenA quick lesson in meteorology: When cold fronts approach, the winds pick up, dark-bellied clouds pile up, and it either rains or snows, depending on the time of year. Something major is going on in the atmosphere; take a look at a weather vane or the bending trees or blowing dust. Simply put, cold fronts describe the leading edge of a moving air mass as it displaces warmer pockets of temperature. Because cold air is denser than warmer air, cold air noses under warm air, forcing the warm air upwards and producing precipitation – rain or snow, again depending on the temperatures.

As a cold front pushes into an area, temperatures usually drop suddenly, then continue a consistent fall; barometric pressure plunges, too, then rises again after the front passes.

Well, I can tell you for sure that by 11:30 the wind wasn’t just gusting, it was all out blowing like crazy, making it feel a lot colder than the thermometer indicated. By 12:30 tiny little flakes of snow began swirling around in the air and the wind just kept on blowing. November 12 it is. At the time of this writing we have yet to see if we have enough snow to really count as the first of the season. Doesn’t matter – one flake is enough to count as far as I’m concerned.

Having absolutely no intention of walking in the garden, or anywhere else for that matter, last Sunday afternoon, New Dog and I were being comfortably lazy together on the couch, me with book in hand, he snoozing and softly snoring. Well, that situation was to change too quickly. Mrs. Neighbor drifted through the kitchen door to announce that The Neighbor was “cleaning up your front yard.”

You know, I just can’t imagine being so bored that I jump on the lawn mower and proceed to mulch somebody else’s fallen leaves. But that is indeed what he was doing.

I had run the mower over the yard once already but the trees seem slower than usual letting go this year, especially the tall maple that stands right in the middle of the front yard. But since my effort a couple of weeks ago, leaves were again ankle deep and obscuring the line between sidewalk, curb and street – an unsafe situation at the very least. Soon there was a real rodeo of mowing, mulching and raking going on since I couldn’t sit by and just watch. I jumped on my mower too and off we went. Mrs. Neighbor tackled the pine needles around the patio and picnic table. New Dog just couldn’t stand not being the center of attention apparently. He took off on a ramble of his own.

New Dog doesn’t usually run into the woods way behind the house, but on that afternoon I was especially concerned. It’s happened before and always makes me uneasy to hear gun shots from those woods. First of all, it is illegal to hunt on Sunday, I don’t care what your weapon is. We heard several loud bangs and booms from too close by, meaning that whoever it was was probably on my property and certainly within the town limits. I asked a county deputy about it and he said, “They’re just target shooting, or that’s what they’ll say.” Well, I can tell you their target was moving ‘cause the shots were coming from different places over the next twenty minutes or so.

Y’all be careful out there – with your cars, your children and your pets. Not all the nuts in the woods are on the trees – some of them carry guns.

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