Changing Seasons

One of the things I love most about Portland is that we actually get all four seasons here. While growing up in Sacramento, CA, I always thought of Winter as something you drove to. We would go up highway 50 to Tahoe and play in the snow, but Winter in Sacramento was similar to what fall is here. Temperatures were usually in the 60's, and it would rain occasionally.

I later moved to Klamath Falls for two years, and experienced the opposite of the mild seasons of the Sacramento Valley. Winters were cold, snowy, severe, with enormous plowed piles of snow often lasting in parking lots until late spring. Summers could be blisteringly hot, as hot as those of California. The extremes of Winter and Summer somehow eclipsed the three months that should properly belong to Spring and Fall, however. I began to think of them as in between seasons, a month or so of slightly different weather and plant colors before you got to the "real" seasons of the year.

Upon moving to Portland, I made the wonderful discovery that each season should properly take up its allotted three month span. Spring and Fall were not pass-through seasons, but proper seasons on their own, each distinctly different from the season before and after it. The edges are blurred a bit as the transition is made, as late Winter looks quite similar to early Spring, and many people think of late Fall as Winter anyway.

Another observation of seasons in Portland is that each month within the three month seasonal span is different as well. Fall is not just orange-leafed tree time for three whole months. The end of September still feels like Summer, October is the epitome of one's imaginations of Fall, November follows along the lines of October, although with less bright trees, and early December is quite hard to distinguish from one's ideal of Winter.

We had a record snowfall in Portland this December, and most of it fell before the actual start of Winter (December 21st). To illustrate the beauty of Portland's changing seasons, I will take you from mid September through the first days of Winter in my garden.

The lushness of early Fall- still smells like Summer.

 

 

Mid-Fall, the fading annuals have been removed and spring bulbs tucked under the soil, but the foliage of the trees are blazing, and the dahlias have reached new impossible heights (they were supposed to be 4 feet tall!)

 

And finally, late Fall blends into early Winter. The annuals and dahlias have all been cut back, the beds have been put to sleep, and Winter lays her gentle blanket to transform the world into a glittering white wonder.