First frost

The inevitable happened on Saturday: a cold front blew through and swept summer away, and frost in the night put most gardens to rest for the winter. We've fired up the wood stove and are scoping out drafty windows and other heat leaks, and all the winter clothing is unpacked, washed, and ready to wear.

The Magdalena mountains, visible from most windows in our house, have given us a few weeks of subtle orange and yellow shading as aspens, oaks, and a few other deciduous species turn, and now will soon be covered with snow. My pitiful garden is just about gone -- only a few pepper plants (bearing half-green, half-red peppers I've been waiting for for months) and most of the lettuce made it through the frost, and once they're gone I can clear it all away, cover the soil with horse manure and pine needles, and dream about next year's bounty.

I still don't feel ready for winter. Seven years in southern California almost felt like a jail sentence except for those marvelous mild winters. I got a taste of winter last year in Denver, and another taste this weekend, and, well... I guess I'll adapt. But just as I was lamenting the descent of winter here, I heard about the southern California wildfires -- oh yeah, it's fire season there, and this year seems particularly awful. As I bring wood inside and light our first fires, they're battling 90+ degree temperatures and furnace-blast winds and, now, fire and smoke. I guess I'd rather have a nice docile fire inside my slightly chilly house than one right outside the window....

This picture amazed and appalled me:

Smoke almost entirely covers most of the LA basin (the middle of the three major smoke plumes), and I can only imagine how awful the air quality must be. And how scared people living anywhere near mountains and foothills must be.