weather | Bertram's Blog

Hello, Seattle!

June 26, 2021 — Pat Bertram

No, I’m not going to Seattle. Seattle has come to me. At least, their weather has. In an odd twist of fate, Seattle is getting our normal record highs and we are getting their usual cool and rainy days.

It’s truly a pleasure getting a rest from baking in the sun. In fact, I rather overdid it today, clearing out a couple of overgrown areas where I’d started growing plants in the hope that someday they will be gardens. Since I triage my yard — ignore the spots that will do okay regardless, ignore the spots that won’t be okay no matter what I do, and concentrate on the areas where I might do the most good — there are always areas in need of intensive care.

I worked more than I should have perhaps, but it was cool, and once I got started clearing out a particular area, I wanted to finish. For some reason, that’s not the area I’d planned to work on next, but apparently, after I dug up a monster weed (I needed wet ground for that because when the sun bakes the ground around here, weeds are cemented in) I just continued.

I couldn’t really do much of anything else. A couple of workers came today to grind the stumps of trees that had been cut down, and that machine is noisy! It takes a long time to grind the stump because it can only do one small strip at a time, so they were here all day.

At one point, the worker was loading the machine back on the trailer, so I went out and asked about the roots. The stump wasn’t a problem for me. It was just a stump. A lump of wood. But the exposed roots all around the stump were growing a massive number of trees, and I figured the easiest way of getting rid of those roots would be to grind them. I reminded him of that, but he said they’d bring a tractor to pull them up. I mentioned how disappointed I was to have that incipient forest still there, so he used my pruning shears to cut them down. Since I am a bit possessive of my tools and people tend to forget whose tool they are using, I stayed in the vicinity and ended up digging up thick clumps of grass that were too tough for my mower, which is what I’d intended to do anyway. Surprisingly, it was easy enough to do because of the soft, wet soil, but it still took a long time. As it turns out, it was a good thing he waited because when his boss came and saw all those roots, they ended up doing the roots, too.

That whole long boring story really served no purpose other than to iterate that I overdid it today, which is amazing to me in itself. No so long ago, I could barely do anything. Of course, come tomorrow, I’ll probably be too stiff and sore to do anything, but that’s fine, too. I’ll enjoy the day of rest here in the coolness of Seattle’s weather.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Posted in life. Tags: exchanging weather with Seattle, stump grinder, stump grinding, trees growing out of exposed roots, triaging garden care, weather. 1 Comment »

Seasons Out of Season

May 23, 2021 — Pat Bertram

It’s been very windy the past few weeks, as well as rainy, but starting around seven this evening, the wind is supposed to die down. The rains are also supposed to be leaving us for a while.

What this has to do with anything in my life, I’m not really sure, except that I get to experience the flow of the seasons. Or more accurately, the flow of seasons when they’re out of season. Except for the relatively cool temperatures, it has seemed more like July monsoon season around here. Many recent days were pleasant in the morning, with the winds bringing rain (and more wind) in the afternoon and evening.

But then, the seasons have always been out of whack in Colorado. I remember Christmases when I was young that were so warm, we played outside in the sun without coats. I remember Easters that were so wintery, our Easter finery was buried beneath snowsuits or heavy coats and leggings. (Leggings today are merely footless tights. Leggings in my youth were heavy wool pants worn beneath skirts for the trek to school or church to keep our legs from freezing.)

I’m looking forward to the quiet (and the lack of headaches) that comes from still air. No creaking branches on neighborhood trees that sound as if they will be breaking any minute. No roaring gusts of wind. No windchimes. Just . . . quiet.

Even so, except for perhaps a few hours in the early morning or an occasional overheated day when one desperately hopes for a breeze, it’s never really still out here on the plains. There are no mountains to act as windbreaks, no hills or forests, though luckily, the winds aren’t as fierce in town. Also luckily, my circadian rhythm now tends to favor the dawn. (That’s not my preference. I prefer to sleep in, but my body senses the rising sun, and that’s the end of any possibility of shut-eye.) It’s probably smart, anyway, to do my outside summer chores in those cooler hours. I certainly don’t need to be pulling weeds when the temperatures climb into the nineties and hundreds

But that’s not something I need to think about now. Today, I just need to hold on for another few hours. Then the dangerous winds will die down, and I will have a semblance of peace . . . for a while, anyway.

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Posted in life. Tags: a change in my circadian rhythms, dangerous winds, headaches from wind, monsoon season in Colorado, weather, wind on the prairie. Leave a Comment »

Halcyon Days

August 13, 2020 — Pat Bertram

I try to take each day as it comes because that’s about all a person can do. I have no control over the weather (or anything else, for that matter) so it’s silly to waste time wishing for things to be different. Still, I am getting a bit tired of the heat. The highs are unvarying around one hundred degrees and have been for months. There might have been a day that slipped below ninety, but if so, I don’t remember.

I remember last year about this same time, I got tired of the heat then, too, and looked forward to cooler days. The high temperatures finally cooled into the high eighties and low nineties, and I waited for the seventy-degree days I was sure were coming. But they didn’t come. We slipped into the low eighties, returned to the low nineties for a few weeks, then dropped to the fifties and sixties. And then lower, of course, as winter moved in.

I was astounded at the drop. I know Colorado has — or at least had — a period of halcyon days where one could catch one’s breath after the heat and before the chill of winter. Admittedly, I’m not familiar with the weather patterns of this part of Colorado (living here a little over a year is hardly enough to enable me see any sort of seasonal pattern), but I am familiar with other parts of Colorado, and we always had a spate of windless 70-degree days in the early fall.

I don’t suppose it really matters — the temperatures change throughout the day, climbing to those flaming highs and dropping to the seventies and sometimes even sixties at night, so if I were to set my watch (assuming I had a watch) by temperature rather than solar hours, I would find my seventies.

Now that I’m working again, I have to pay attention to the time (though I have been setting my alarm when I get up in the morning so that I get a reminder when it’s time to get ready to go), but generally, I don’t pay attention to time. So I doubt I’d pay attention if I did have a watch that kept track of the ideal temperature. And anyway, things change, so the ideal temperature would probably have passed before I even noticed.

So what’s the point of this discussion? Nothing, really, though I suppose it reminds me to be grateful I haven’t anything more traumatic to talk about than the unremitting heat.

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Posted in life. Tags: hot summer days, looking forward to cooler weather, paying attention to the weather, paying attention to time, taking things as they come, temperatures in the seventies, weather. 1 Comment »

Generally Considered Safe

October 26, 2019 — Pat Bertram

After seven months of living in my new community, yesterday I got friend requests on Facebook from a slew of people I’ve met here. It’s lovely, of course, being connected in myriad ways to people, especially when once has hermit tendencies as I do, but . . . (You knew there was a but coming, didn’t you? With me, there always is.)

But . . . once people I know in offline life start seeing me in online life, I have to be more circumspect in what I blog about lest I inadvertently hurt someone by a thoughtless word, or alienate with an ill-advised observation.

This is especially true in a small community where most of the people have known one another their entire lives. I learned that lesson shortly after I moved here. Someone asked me about an activity I had participated in, and I said it was nice except that one particular person monopolized the conversation. It turns out that the monopolizer was a good friend of the woman I was talking to. Oops.

So I try to be careful even in my thoughts because I am one of those people who, if I’m comfortable, will say whatever comes to mind. And after having opened up about my grief and other private matters the past ten years, I tend to be comfortable almost everywhere and with almost everyone.

The solution, until I get comfortable with my posts being available to new friends as well as old, is to be careful what I write.

Local weather is generally considered safe to write about and in fact is something I’ve been thinking about of late. For weeks, I checked the forecast, and the forecast was always the same — high temperatures until about October 21, followed by weeks of temperatures in the 60s. The first day the temperatures slid down the 60s, I planted my bulbs, and it’s a good thing. I don’t know what happened to all those weeks of 60 degree weather, but somehow they evaporated. The current forecast shows frigid temperatures for a long time to come.

Today was a gorgeous day — deep blue skies and warm temperatures. By Monday we might have snow, and by Wednesday, we’ll be down to a low of 2 degrees. Nope. That’s not a typo. 2 degrees. Almost 0. Brrrrr!

I’d hoped to have my garage foundation finished by now to give me a protected place for my vintage VW, but with this forecast, who knows when the contractor will get to it. I just hope he manages to stop by to insulate my kitchen pipes before the freeze hits.

Thanks to everyone who takes a peek at my blogs. I appreciate all of you, even if I do have to be especially nice on this blog for a while.

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Posted in blogging, culture, life, relationships. Tags: being circumspect about blog topics, connecting with friends, olline and online friends, online life, online vs offline life, weather. 4 Comments »

Taking “W” Things With Gratitude

November 27, 2013 — Pat Bertram

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude. ~~ G. K. Chesterton

For the rest of November, I’m going to take with gratitude some of those things I often take for granted — an entire alphabet’s worth! Since today is the twenty-third day of this surge of gratitude, I am giving thanks for “W” things.

I am especially grateful for:

Walking. Today it is 44 months since my life mate/soul mate died. In 4 months it will be 4 years. Even though I can barely remember him and our shared life any more, I can still feel his absence, as if there is a void deep inside me. I don’t know how I made it this far, though the thousands of miles I have walked during the past 44 months have helped. Walking is my solace, my meditation, my inspiration, and in many cases, my transportation. (Not as much transportation as I would like — there are few stores within walking distance of where I am staying.) I am exceedingly grateful I am able to walk, particularly since so many people are denied this simple pleasure.

Weather. Although we never take weather for granted — we are so aware of the weather we are almost obsessed by it — we do take the fact of weather for granted. Whether rain or sun, blizzards or balmy breezes, there is always some kind of weather. Today I will take for gratitude whatever weather comes my way.

Water. We don’t take water for granted as we once did. We can’t drink from streams or creeks. In many cases, we can’t even drink from our faucets as we once did. There are territorial disputes over water, as in frontier days. And yet, as of now, we still have water to drink, even if it does come in dubious purified form from the grocery store, and that is something to take with gratitude. I will be drinking extra water today, giving thanks that potable water is still so abundant.

Wisdom. I don’t know how much wisdom there is in the world, or even how much wisdom I have, but today, I will be taking with gratitude whatever wisdom I find.

So what “W” things are you taking with gratitude?

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