First frost, first fire

It is almost three weeks since my last post and some things have changed in the interval. We were fortunate to have a good stretch of calm dry weather while we painted the house and then while I moved the firewood into the shed, but this morning the north wind is persistent and the temperature at the airport is 0.1 degrees. That's colder than I like in October, but that's the way it is; storms have been swirling through here driving rain against our windows and filling the wheelbarrow, and it seems as though the wind has been funneling from the north or northeast for more than a week. There has been a change in the season.

When we lived in Istanbul, Lorraine talked about the seasonal changes that happened there and the fact that there seemed to be one day in the fall where the temperature just dropped by ten degrees and stayed there, and a day in the spring where it jumped up by ten degrees and stayed. I didn’t think that it could be as simple and abrupt as that – and perhaps it wasn’t entirely – but it really did seem to happen. It suddenly got colder or warmer and stayed that way; the season just changed. Seems like it’s the same here this year.

I'm happy that the wood is in the shed and the house is painted, because the seasonal change has happened. Not only have we had our first fire, with that faint smell of burning dust and the clicking sounds in the stovepipe as the stove heats up, but it has been going most days and nights since we started. The wood this year is good, it lights easily and there is little of the bubbling and hissing you get with damp or unseasoned wood, and we are back into the woodstove ritual, bringing wood up from the shed, making sure there is kindling, building the fire, watching the burn, and adjusting the damper – all this so that we can enjoy that radiant warmth through this changed season as we move toward winter.

The other part of this picture (though there is no image to illustrate it) is the first hard frost of the season. It happened earlier this week, and it wasn’t without warning. This was not the “Risk of frost in low lying areas” notification but a simple “Frost warning continued” from Environment Canada, and they were right. I looked out in the morning and saw that the windshield of our Subaru was completely white. When I checked the leaves of the bean plants that I had covered in plastic the night before, they were a darker green, a sign I needn't have bothered, while the hostas were suddenly yellower and a little more wilted.

Frost had struck, the first of the season, and once that has happened there aren't many more surprises. More frosts will follow, and we will continue our seasonal descent, whether we like it or not.

So, it's time. Feed the stove. Get the gloves out. The season has changed and winter is coming. You might as well get ready and you might as well like it.