Ready for fall? (Seattle, Wenatchee, Tumwater: hotel, neighborhood, live)

[Ira500]

I'm just trying to ripen some tomatoes and peppers in the garden, which requires sun.
But absent that, fall is really my favorite time of year.

[LMB]

Originally Posted by Ira500

I'm just trying to ripen some tomatoes and peppers in the garden, which requires sun.

Me too, Ira! This was my first gardening year in the Pacific Northwest and I experimented with growing tomatoes & peppers in two different locations. I put the same plants in the ground, in a traditional garden bed in a sunny location and also in containers on our rooftop deck. The rooftop deck crops are winning. Healthier looking plants, better productivity and faster ripening. Next year I plan to expand the container garden up on the roof. It seems to be at least 10 degrees warmer up there which the tomatoes love. The downside is that the container plants need to be watered every day. These heirloom tomatoes are so worth it though!

Lynn

[Ira500]

Supposedly this is a particularly bad year for tomatoes in the pacific NW, so bad that the Tilth garden fair canceled their annual tomato taste off. But I've got some early ripening heirlooms ( Halladay Mortgage Lifter) that seem to thrive on bad soil and neglect.

[Woof]

Originally Posted by allforcats

Woof, how long have you lived among the lahars? And why do you hang out on the Alaska forum? (Well for that matter, why do I?? )

Oh, the Lassen lahars were SO last year. I just didn't update. I'm out by Santa Cruz now.

I'm just a wannabe Alaskan. I could drive the Bessie Cow up there, I suppose, but I wouldn't be able to afford to heat an apartment if I got one, not the way oil prices are trending.

Oh, the autumn is also my favorite season (I like that clunky old name better than "fall"). I miss the autumns of my youth in New England, the incredible variety of colors, the smell of them there ... all the plants are in the process of huddling and hunkering down for the winter, but the leaves so alive in their dying.

It's just not the same out here on the West Coast, the fall here is more like a preliminary monsoon season.

[allforcats]

Originally Posted by Woof

I'm out by Santa Cruz now.

I miss the autumns of my youth in New England, the incredible variety of colors, the smell ..... the leaves so alive in their dying.

Thanks for your geographic update -- and your exquisite poetic prose

I too have been, well, a kinda sorta wannabe Alaskan. I've visited from Glacier Bay on south, and lived very briefly in Fairbanks, and realized by doing all that I had already made that dream come true, and I didn't need to stay there, among some conditions (especially the overall politics) to which I could not resonate.

AUTUMN IN FAIRBANKS IS EXACTLY LIKE CONNECTICUT, minus the red and orange leaf color. Lots and lots of birches and aspens, so lots of gold, yellow and amber leaves. Surprised the heck out of me!! And the trees are jammed, it seemed, with three, count 'em three!, kinds of Chickadees!

The autumn of MY youth was Connecticut and New York. The smells of the earth, the growing things, the hunkering-down things, the crispness of the dry air in the nostrils -- and the crack of twigs breaking underfoot in the woods -- yes....... Autumn here in western Washington is different, much more gentle as the weather here is all the time, but a decent amount of leaf color. But I'm always surprised at the greenness of this place all year due to the conifers. Comforting somehow. I absolutely love rain, showers, drizzle, mizzle, mist, fog, the whole thing, especially the smell of the earth in rain, so I look forward to it. Then we get crocuses in January!! What a delightful place!!

Do you ever get rain in Santa Cruz? Do any leaves change color there?

[Woof]

We get more rain on average than Seattle in a year, though it's concentrated as downpours for maybe 3-4 months. I think things get greener during the fall, the grassy areas at least. The grassier hills are all yellow and brown during the summer.

I'm writing this in a small eucalyptus forest, which I think stays green all year (could be mistaken on that). A vast migration of monarch butterflies is due any moment to feed on the eucalyptus. We're at the southern end of the redwood forests also, and they're evergreen.

[seattlerain]

Originally Posted by allforcats

Thanks for your geographic update -- and your exquisite poetic prose

I too have been, well, a kinda sorta wannabe Alaskan. I've visited from Glacier Bay on south, and lived very briefly in Fairbanks, and realized by doing all that I had already made that dream come true, and I didn't need to stay there, among some conditions (especially the overall politics) to which I could not resonate.

AUTUMN IN FAIRBANKS IS EXACTLY LIKE CONNECTICUT, minus the red and orange leaf color. Lots and lots of birches and aspens, so lots of gold, yellow and amber leaves. Surprised the heck out of me!! And the trees are jammed, it seemed, with three, count 'em three!, kinds of Chickadees!

The autumn of MY youth was Connecticut and New York. The smells of the earth, the growing things, the hunkering-down things, the crispness of the dry air in the nostrils -- and the crack of twigs breaking underfoot in the woods -- yes....... Autumn here in western Washington is different, much more gentle as the weather here is all the time, but a decent amount of leaf color. But I'm always surprised at the greenness of this place all year due to the conifers. Comforting somehow. I absolutely love rain, showers, drizzle, mizzle, mist, fog, the whole thing, especially the smell of the earth in rain, so I look forward to it. Then we get crocuses in January!! What a delightful place!!

Do you ever get rain in Santa Cruz? Do any leaves change color there?

It looks like we are not quite all alone in our love for fall!

Have you ever spent time in northeastern Washington in the fall...? Birches and Aspens and Tamarack mixed in with the Ponderosa Pine are spectacular!

Even here in western Washington the further away from the city you the more vibrant the fall colors are...even the musty smells of autumn are more fragrant.

If only it was not so fleeting…

[Woof]

I was thinking of passing through Spokane to check it out on the way to Seattle, maybe I'll be in time to see that, Seattlerain.

[allforcats]

Originally Posted by seattlerain

It looks like we are not quite all alone in our love for fall!

Originally Posted by Woof

I was thinking of passing through Spokane to check it out on the way to Seattle, maybe I'll be in time to see that, Seattlerain.

Well that makes perfect sense -- a straight line from Santa Cruz to Seattle would always include Spokane. You crack me up!!

[Woof]

Oh, I'd like to meander a bit for once, instead of going directly by interstate highways.

But I shouldn't have looked at the picture thread in the Massachusetts forum, now I've got a nostalgic hard-on for the state I was born and raised in.