Seasonal dissonance
I'm not complaining, but it's a bit odd to suddenly be on the verge of spring in the mountains of Western North Carolina, after spending almost two months in a beautiful snowy environment.
I noticed moss pink - or thrift as some folks call it in the South (Phlox subulata) in flower today, in front of a house down the street, in addition to the flowering yellow jasmine in front of the apartment next door.
The dissonance comes from being absent, I suppose, for a longer time in the back and forth conditions that make up winter in the Southeast. We've often been away somewhere different in winter -- recent years found us in New Zealand, Cuba, Guatemala and Argentina, so generally places that were in a different climate zone, but not for more than a month. And not in so dramatically different a climate than this winter, nor for a couple of months.
Before 2015, we traveled in in an early December-early January time frame, during winter break; after moving full-time to Asheville, it's been in mid-January to late February, in general, so the timing was a bit different, too.
Spring and fall are wonderful times to be in the Southern Appalachians, so we've generally planned to be here then. Summer is nice, too, but now we have Quebec drawing us strongly back, to a place that we've found resonated so perfectly with our natural landscape inclinations, complete with a garden to tweak towards a naturalistic one, next to a very special national park.
It won't take long to become accustomed to our milder winter conditions here in the Southern Appalachians in the Asheville basin, I'm sure.
Woody, fooled by the longer daylight here in afternoon, as we're much further south and west of Bic, didn't prompt Tim for dinner until just now (at 4:45 pm). It was routinely at 4 pm in Quebec! So dogs experience seasonal dissonance, too.
Woody's REALLY happy to be on walks again where there are an abundance of dog smells and green vegetation, although he loved the snow, too, rolling around happily and enjoying bites of fresh snow.
I noticed moss pink - or thrift as some folks call it in the South (Phlox subulata) in flower today, in front of a house down the street, in addition to the flowering yellow jasmine in front of the apartment next door.
The dissonance comes from being absent, I suppose, for a longer time in the back and forth conditions that make up winter in the Southeast. We've often been away somewhere different in winter -- recent years found us in New Zealand, Cuba, Guatemala and Argentina, so generally places that were in a different climate zone, but not for more than a month. And not in so dramatically different a climate than this winter, nor for a couple of months.
Before 2015, we traveled in in an early December-early January time frame, during winter break; after moving full-time to Asheville, it's been in mid-January to late February, in general, so the timing was a bit different, too.
Spring and fall are wonderful times to be in the Southern Appalachians, so we've generally planned to be here then. Summer is nice, too, but now we have Quebec drawing us strongly back, to a place that we've found resonated so perfectly with our natural landscape inclinations, complete with a garden to tweak towards a naturalistic one, next to a very special national park.
It won't take long to become accustomed to our milder winter conditions here in the Southern Appalachians in the Asheville basin, I'm sure.
Woody, fooled by the longer daylight here in afternoon, as we're much further south and west of Bic, didn't prompt Tim for dinner until just now (at 4:45 pm). It was routinely at 4 pm in Quebec! So dogs experience seasonal dissonance, too.
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| Woody a year ago (from a FB memory this morning) |
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