Talking About Weather

This has been the oddest winter. Two days ago, it was 38 degrees F., gray and dreary. Today, it's 72 and looks like summer.

I'm at our house in the country. Hubby is playing golf, and I'm about to go outside to enjoy the beautiful day. I notice that the orange and yellow lantana finally suffered winter-kill. Oddly enough, the plumbago is still green and vibrant and loaded with purplish-blue blooms. A branch of it is waving in the breeze outside my kitchen window.

Wacky Weather

Wacky weather indeed. According to the The Old Farmer's Almanac 2016, which I faithfully buy every year even though I'm not a farmer, obviously, 2016 is going to be another wet year. That's what the overall prediction was last year for my area. Rarely is the Farmer's Almanac wrong. Last year was one of the wettest I can remember. Tons of rain. Compared to the drought in 2013, that was better I guess.

(By the way, there are many almanacs published, the one I always buy is the link above. It's been published since 1792. I always get the print edition. I know Amazon has a Kindle version, but I've found it's too difficult to see charts and such in an ebook. So if you want to get one, regardless of which you choose, get it in print.) 

The men in my family always paid close attention to weather. They did farm and raise cattle, or as the popular local phrase says: run cows. "How many head do you run?" Families that work the land always are in tune with weather. When I talk to my older brother, weather figures in each conversation.

Me: "How's it going today?"

Him: "Okay. It's cloudy and looks like rain. I'm hauling hay and trying to finish before then."

We'll go on to talk about other things, but, rarely do we talk without mentioning weather.

Takeaway Truth

For some people--real and fictional--talking about weather isn't just a way of filling spaces in a conversation.