It’s been a few days since Daylight Savings ended, and this time of year always has me uniquely aware of the time change for about two weeks. Whenever I think, “What time is it? It looks and feels about like noon...”, I can’t help but go through a mental loop of math and physics and economics and bureaucratic agencies and back again before I get to, “Oh yea, it’s actually 11am, but 11am looks and feels different now”. That mental note doesn't stick long.
The sun is in a different place than it was last week at this time, the shadows and color of light are different, the temperature is quite different, the animals are acting different, but apparently this is the new “eleven o’clock AM”. For the dogs who are used to getting fed at 11:30, they are good at making it quite clear to me that their lunch is late, when “really” it isn’t their lunchtime yet. I feed them and grumble to myself about the whole thing.
I really just want to get you excited about the most down-to-earth gardening wisdom I have ever encountered...
In the past couple of years, I’ve been exploring a couple of related concepts having to do with the sun and marking time and the seasons. After moving around to several very different locations in the central US while simultaneously trying to take up gardening, I found it very useful to think about the seasons with a different perspective than just hot versus cold, green versus brown, dry versus wet. Since spring in the south feels very much like summer in the north, and mountain desert winters don’t feel anything like marshy forest winters, my moving around took that whole "fall back" and "spring forward" time confusion phenomenon to a totally different level... until I learned about solar terms.
I'll talk more about solar terms and their origin in an upcoming post, but before digging into the physics fun of it all, I really just want to get you excited about the most down-to-earth gardening wisdom I have ever encountered amidst my gardening and philosophical pursuits.
Earlier this week, we had our first good frost of the season… it got down into the 30s and 20s for a few days, enough to kill off most of the foliage on my remaining vegetable plants. I had to start bringing plants in for protection, even though we’re going to have a warm spell of 50-degree weather over the next couple of weeks; the overnight temps are just too risky for anything I have that needs to be overwintered.
But I wasn't caught off guard about the frost or the time change this year because I've been using a new (to me) calendar system to get more in sync with what happens at this time of year. Ancient Chinese farmers developed this solar-based calendar hundreds of years ago as a way of predicting and preparing for seasonal changes and all the agricultural work and patterns that follow. It breaks the year into 24 parts according to the movement of the earth around the sun, and I've found it to be a very nice way of pacing the year, rather than in weekly or monthly chunks.
This year, in the middle of October I knew to keep an eye out for the first dew, and then after that would be the first frost around Halloween. After that, there's the time change, and then things really start to feel like winter's coming. I know it seems simple and logical, maybe even something that doesn't sound too distance from a first grade lesson about the seasons, but the nuanced way in which I already knew what was coming based on subtle changes in my yard and garden has really blown me away. And that's what I want to help you experience for yourself.
You see, as the earth moves into a different segment of it's yearly cycle around the sun, the shoulder between the seasons actually seems like the perfect time to make clock changes (if you're so inclined). We're right in between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice, so we are literally swinging around a corner in our solar cycle from solar patterns that give us fall weather to solar patterns that give us winter weather. The harvest is all pretty much over, or you're at least having to make strides to extend your growing season. The frost has officially killed off the most tender of plants, so things start to look quite drab and crunchy. It's no surprise that the Chinese mark this time of year with the two solar terms "Frost's Descent" and "The Beginning of Winter". It truly feels like the beginning of the end of the year...
It just makes so much sense, and I am so surprised this isn't a larger part of common farming and gardening culture in the United States, as it seems to be in so many other parts of the world and cultures throughout history.
So join me as I share lots of tools and resources you haven't seen before when it comes to growing your garden. I’ll show you ways to get ahead of the game and be ready when it’s time to take the next step in your gardening efforts. You'll never wonder "what time is it really" once you sync up with the patterns of nature. You'll also become a better gardener. I promise!
Thanks for reading my unreasonably long inaugural blog post,
Hoping you have an unseasonably warm "Beginning of Winter"!
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