It snowed a bit yesterday, our first snow of the season, though it wasn’t much of a snowfall. Big flakes floated down for about five minutes, dusted the ground like powdered sugar, then disappeared. When I saw at the last minute that snow was forecast (before that, they said it would pass us by), I considered planting my wildflower seeds, but I knew there wouldn’t be much snow because the daytime temperature was in the high thirties. Since it’s going to warm up in the next couple of days, I didn’t want the seeds to think that winter had come and gone and now it was spring and time to sprout. I still have time to plant, either right before or right after Christmas, to give the seeds a good start. After all, it’s still fall. Winter won’t come for ten more days.
I am preparing for the solstice. I set up my bowls of light, ready to celebrate the end of the creeping darkness. I even set up my little Christmas tree. I didn’t really feel like doing the work, but I thought it important to make some attempt at a festive atmosphere even if it is just for me. And anyway, I do enjoy seeing the ornaments I’ve collected over the years.
It is amusing, though — I’d just cleaned up the last speck of glitter from last year, and now I am glitterizing my house again. (Yes, Spellcheck, I do know glitterizing isn’t a word, but no matter how much you redline me, I’m leaving it.)
In three weeks, we start a new year. If you thought 1984 an inauspicious year because of the book by that name, 2022 should really creep you out. That’s the year the story in the film Soylent Green took place. Yikes.
Just one more thing to think about in the days to come.
***
What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?
A fun book for not-so-fun times.
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Bertram's Blog 
December 11, 2021 at 10:26 pm
It’s interesting (to me, at least) these popular sci-fi stories pick 40-50 years as a long enough time to essentially redefine the human experience. Roughly 2 generations to upend environmental, political, legal, and social structures. Other examples include Blade Runner, and 2001. Like histories, such stories probably say and ask questions more about the time in which they’re written than the time in which they’re set.
For any kind of future predicting, I’m more inclined to believe in the abilities of the wildflower seeds. They know what they’re doing.
December 12, 2021 at 7:51 am
It makes sense that the old stories, written in the thirties to fifties, used that time frame of a couple of generations, because the first half of the twentieth century did undergo vast changes within even a single generation. But any story after that should have taken into consideration that things haven’t changed much in the past couple of generations. Culturally, at least, we still seem stuck in the 1990s. A log of music, clothes styles, such as pants falling around the knees, even the hairstyles of today would not be out of place in the world of 30 years ago,
December 12, 2021 at 10:34 am
Your Christmas decorations were little strange to me but beautiful.
In France The 2021 winter solstice will take place on Tuesday, December 21 at 4:59 p.m. After the day time rice little by little. I think it is similar or same in Colorado.
Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 8:59 am in Denver. The shortest day of the year. The seasons were decided by man. So far I feel the sun never changed his attitude or orbital routine.
I have to abandoned my scientific studies for personal reasons. But I feel the global climatical change was made by man. Politically speaking I have no idea to find the culprit and would like to stay neutral.
Plants have only one political intention. Survival !
I don’t know who have decided the flowers were wildflowers or not.
I have only suggestion please to fallow the instructions of the package or you can always grow wildflowers in pots and replant later.
One information of today in Paris :
December 12 temperature records
Heat record 16.0 C (1961)
Normal 7.8C
Record cold -10.0 C (1879)
Seasonal difference of the day +3 C
December 12, 2021 at 5:47 pm
We’re pretty close to our average temperatures for December: 46 high, 20 low, with an occasional day being a lot warmer and an occasional night being much colder, but then, that’s what an average means, I guess.
December 12, 2021 at 1:01 pm
I’ve heard that Soylent Green tastes pretty good if dump ketchup on it.
December 12, 2021 at 5:39 pm
Could be. I never had any.
December 13, 2021 at 9:54 pm
I’m definitely ready for some snow, but I know we probably won’t get any for quite some time! It doesn’t even feel like December here