Isn't It Supposed To Be Winter?

        I hate to be curmudgeonly. I'm not a grump, really. I generally have a bright outlook. I've been called a glass-half-full person. So I've tried, not very successfully, not to complain about this gorgeous autumn weather everyone says we're having. And it has been, really. Glorious hiking weather, and I've taken advantage of it as much as possible. And I love it.

        For a while. Through, say, September, or even mid-October. But it's November, ye gods, and this warm, sunny weather has gone on and on and on. Will winter never come?

        Yesterday I went into the garden and found, to my great surprise, a rose bush with eight blossoms on it. That bush hadn't bloomed since I put it in the ground last spring, when it gradually lost all its blossoms and then drooped and sighed and languished until I finally got the right kind of irrigation on it (thanks to Mike's help), when it perked up but never bloomed again. Now it must have thought it was still summer (as well it might, since it can't read calendars, and determines summer by warmth more than by daylight hours, maybe), and so it put out midsummer energy and all those blossoms.

        They are a gorgeous deep pink, a rich sunrise color. I picked the two best blossoms and brought them inside, where I enjoy them as no curmudgeon ever could.

        But it's November, for God's sake. 

        Two days ago we did actually get some rain, slow and slight, but it was recognizably rain. Things got wet. 

        Now we're back to that everlasting sun, though the temperatures have, I am glad to say, dropped ten degrees or so. Actually, since I'm not a curmudgeon, I'll say that chilly sunny days are my favorite kind of November days. (A little colder would be even nicer.) But these days should come after days if not weeks of dreary, gray, rainy, drizzly, what most people would call miserable weather. After that, chilly sunny days are glorious, especially when there's snow on the ground and blue skies above. 

        We can enjoy this kind of autumn, but let us not be anthropocentric. We all need the rain, in whatever form it comes. I would give up these sunny November days for days of rain. Even my rose bush would be happy with a good hard rain.