Back Home by Chris Hardie
When it comes to the weather, I come from a long line of seasonal pessimists who expect the worst and prepare for it.
Even in the height of summer my great grandfather would comment that the days were growing shorter and before you know it, winter will be here. While I’m not that pessimistic, I do keep an eye on the calendar and take action to get ready for what’s to come.
I do have to admit that even though we’re knocking on November’s door, it’s a little hard to think about winter weather when we’ve been enjoying such a beautiful second summer. It’s what meteorologists call the period of abnormally warm, sunny weather that occurs in mid-to-late autumn after the first freeze.
Through Oct. 24 in La Crosse, the average high temperature for the month was 71 degrees, which is 6.2 degrees above normal. There were 13 days with temperatures above 70 and four days with temperatures above 80 – including a record of 87 on two days.
The warm and dry weather has been a blessing for farmers, as the corn and beans have dried down nicely in the fields and the harvest is well underway. I knew the beans were ripe a few weeks ago when the annual invasion of the multi-colored lady Asian beetles began. The bugs leave the bean fields where they feast on aphids during the growing season and try to find a warm place to spend the winter. The box elder bugs are trying to book lodging as well.
Preparing for winter means getting ready for the heating season. While we have gas heat, we also burn wood, especially during bitterly cold snaps. Recently I had our chimney professionally cleaned and inspected, since it is 20 years old. There was very little creosote, which means that the wood we burn has been properly dried and seasoned.
I certainly didn’t need any jacket a few days ago when I split and carried some firewood from a pile of maple that I cut up a few years ago after a winter storm took down some trees in the yard. I hauled a couple of wheelbarrows to fill up the wood box.
As I was splitting, Mother Nature sent an observer. A beautiful black and orange butterfly landed on one of the logs and basked in the warm sunshine. “Why are you still hanging around?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you be well on your way south?”
While species like monarch, painted lady and red admiral do migrate, according to wisconsinbutterflies.org, the vast majority of Wisconsin’s butterfly species do not migrate. They survive winters by going dormant in a specific life stage – eggs, caterpillars or chrysalises. Some go into adult hibernation.
That’s the case with my new friend, an Eastern comma butterfly. It spends the winter in sheltered crevices in log piles or tree bark. Since the weather was still nice, my friend was still feeding to build up energy for the winter.
Me too.
The next day I stepped outside at dawn just to absorb the morning silence. As I took in the autumn landscape, I heard the faint chirping of a lone cricket. Crickets do not survive the winter but their offspring do in the form of eggs that enter into diapause, a state of suspended cellular development.
Across the creek the trees were turning reddish brown. The peak colors were past. The days of stepping outside without a jacket were dwindling. Soon the landscape will be gray and bleak.
“Chirp, chirp,” called the oblivious cricket.
I don’t speak cricket, but the message was clear.
While we need to plan for the future, sometimes we need to just live in the moment.
