Monday, October 4, 2010

October Arrives Gently

       It is with some relief and pleasure that the month of October has arrived very gently as far a weather is concerned.


      September in Central Alberta was a very nasty month. It was cool, cloudy and rainy. We had a couple of nights with killing frosts and half a dozen nights with below freezing temperatures. We had day after day of overcast skies. We had drizzle, heavy showers and just plain rain. We didn't set any precipitation records but added to our already wet conditions it just made matters worse. We didn't have sunny warm drying days.

      So to begin October we have had some sunny warm days. What a relief! The days have become shorter so drying up is much slower. Why am I  so antsy about getting warm dry weather? Well, I'm a farm boy at heart and I know we need some warm dry weather to harvest crops. Closer to my world , I need some dry weather to complete some gardening tasks the way I would like to do them. I dig my vegetable garden by hand. I need the exercise. To do this the soil has to be fairly dry. Right now the soil is muddy. It's hard to dig and have the soil broken down.

     So to get some warm dry weather is a real treat after what September had to throw at us.