The vineyards and olive groves are dead in California
Boohoo. The vines are leafless now, and the once vibrantly green hills of vineyards are now barren and brown. For those of you who live in such regions, are the same effects felt due to the season where you live? I liked Autumn very much when I lived in big cities, but now that I live in the middle of the wine country, it has become my least favorite season.
Having come from Los Angeles and Las Vegas, there have been few times where I have truly been able to witness the awe-inspiring majesty of the stars in the sky. Now that I live where I do, I see them every night, and it is something marvelous to behold.
Uriel
Nope. Summer and winter look pretty similar here.
Stars are nice, but the only constellations I can ever pick out are Orion and the Big Dipper. I enjoy watching the moon, though. It does all kinds of creepy things out here. Once I was driving to Albuquerque at night and I saw an orange light on the horizon that honestly, I thought was a fire int he distance. Over the next twenty minutes or so it got larger and larger until I could see that it was the waxing moon rising. As it climbed into the black sky it looked just like a baleful orange cat's eye staring down at me, with a few high clouds wreathing it, lit up orange from its glow. As it kept climbing it eventually paled to yellow and then became normal, but for that first hour or so it was the creepiest sight....
Deborah
It's kind of hard to talk about seasons in San Francisco. Except for when it's raining (which doesn't usually happen in the summer), any day could be from any season. Most of the trees are evergreen, so you don't really feel autumn in that sense. Many flowering plants bloom almost the year round, and we have the occasional winter when flowers don't stop blooming, so there's never that wonderful feeling of of awe at seeing the first blooms of spring. It's kind of boring where seasons are concerned, but the trade-off is that we have a lot of beautiful days throughout the year. And the ocean winds blow all the pollution over to the East Bay.
Speaking of stars, I finally live in a neighborhood where I can sometimes see the stars pretty well at night. Of course, they look nothing like they did while I was driving through the desert in Nevada last year.
fab
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Boohoo. The vines are leafless now, and the once vibrantly green hills of vineyards are now barren and brown. For those of you who live in such regions, are the same effects felt due to the season where you live? I liked Autumn very much when I lived in big cities, but now that I live in the middle of the wine country, it has become my least favorite season.
Yes, you're right, autumn is quite depressing... Days become shorter, more rain, more grey skies... and the leaves are falling. Soon winter wille come (and, good news, the ski season !! that is the good point of winter ! )
Do you like ski, do you practice it ?
Benjamin [inactive]
Re: The vineyards and olive groves are dead in California
Porthos wrote:
Boohoo. The vines are leafless now, and the once vibrantly green hills of vineyards are now barren and brown. For those of you who live in such regions, are the same effects felt due to the season where you live? I liked Autumn very much when I lived in big cities, but now that I live in the middle of the wine country, it has become my least favorite season.
Look on the bright side — your autumn is probably still warmer and sunnier than my summer.
By the way, I find it very interesting that you are using 'autumn' instead of 'fall'.
Porthos
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Look on the bright side — your autumn is probably still warmer and sunnier than my summer.
I am tempted to point at you and laugh.
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By the way, I find it very interesting that you are using 'autumn' instead of 'fall'.
I thought *fall* might be confusing for those who aren't 100% fluent in English. They might think I meant "to fall", as in "to fall down". Besides, Romance languages use a word more similar to autumn.
Uriel
We still use autumn, Benjamin -- it's sort of the fancy, poetic, evocative word. Fall is more the workaday word.
Personally, I don't find fall depressing at all -- I used to love looking at the bright foliage as it changed colors, back when I lived where there were trees, like upstate NY. Gorgeous! Here, the only trees are the ones people have planted around their houses as landscaping, and they aren't massed enough to give the same effect. Nor do we have many of the red-leaved kinds that you see back east. Most of our cottonwoods and other deciduous trees just turn yellow and brown.
greg in noord-frankrijk
Yes, autumn can be a period hard to manage. This year in Paris autumn has been relatively mild, I find. There are even leaves left on some trees. I recall only one frosty morning so far. Good news : daylight will start increasing in less than one month.
Deborah
Since the old langcafe is gone, I think I'll dredge up a picture that was in it, from my cross-country trip in early November 2005. This is an old mill in the Great Smoky Mountains in NC.
This is far enough south that the fall foliage often doesn't reach its peak until later in November.
Uriel
greg in noord-frankrijk wrote:
Yes, autumn can be a period hard to manage. This year in Paris autumn has been relatively mild, I find. There are even leaves left on some trees. I recall only one frosty morning so far. Good news : daylight will start increasing in less than one month.
Increasing? We just lost ours to Daylight Savings.
Pretty, pretty, Deborah!
Deborah
Uriel wrote:
Pretty, pretty, Deborah!
Why, thank you! Here's another from the same trip, but closer to your home: Zion National Park.
Uriel
Utah. I knew there had to be a reason why people actually lived there!
The vines are leafless now, and the once vibrantly green hills of vineyards are now barren and brown. For those of you who live in such regions, are the same effects felt due to the season where you live? I liked Autumn very much when I lived in big cities, but now that I live in the middle of the wine country, it has become my least favorite season.
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