The 2-day story: From Summer to....Winter?

Greetings from Colorado, where Wednesday we had the air-conditioning on with temperature highs of 85 degrees, and then we wake up to THIS on Friday morning......

The lows dipped into the high 20's, then more snow on Saturday with lows in the 30's.  I am pretty sure at this point they were asking me to "put this stuff back where it came from!"


Can you just IMAGINE the dialogue between them?  It seemed to me that they were looking to each other and pointing fingers......I mean pointing claws and paws at each other and saying "What did YOU DO??"

However, it wasn't long before they figured out what to do with all of this white stuff....scratch around in it of course!  Otis, the Flemish Giant 6 month old, however, was thinking this cooler weather was AWESOME!  He was 'feelin his oats' and started chasing the chickens around for some early morning cool-weather entertainment.  I think the above picture is when they were all about to play a game of duck-duck-goose (or chick-chick-wabbit, as the case may be).        "NOT IT!"

Colorado can have the strangest weather at times, but I couldn't live anywhere else.  Where else can you have Summer one day and Winter the next?  Literally.  When it hits 50 degrees in the winter, it's time for short sleeves!  All sarcasm aside, this last week did catch me quite off guard.  This year we seemingly went from Winter to an extreme Summer with record breaking  lengths of days-in-a-row of 100+ degree temperatures.  We cooled down to a few days in the 80's and 70's recently, but October hit and we had an early snow fall within 2 days of 80 degree weather!  Wow.  I didn't cover my newly sprouting carrots and spinach in hopes of frost prevention (out of lack of time in my crazy schedule as of late more than anything).  Today, the sun was shining and we hit a high of 51.  What better weather than to mow the lawn and let the chickens out to help me begin to winterize the garden?

George allowing some petting and Red running for the hills (somewhere)...Oh, and Bandit's back-end

My garden didn't fair too poorly with the sudden snow; all of my fall garden sprouts are healthy.  I did pull the lingering pepper, eggplant and tomato plants today.  It's always a bit sad when the garden isn't full of greenery and producing fruits, but I look forward to the cycle beginning all over again each season.  For now, tho, I have more learning to do about extending my growing season with crop covers and growing things indoors over the winter.



George the super-garden helper.  Where there's fresh dirt, there's George.

I have an overly large pile of books from the library on gardening specific to Colorado and the Rocky Mountain regions.  I have also been enjoying the many informative posts from the amazing gals over at Farm Chick Chit Chat too!
I love learning new things and sharing them with others, so hopefully I will be able to share with you more about extending your growing season in Colorado as I learn it.

Thankfully, the forecast is calling for a mild week ahead with average temperatures in the 60's.  Do you think I would be safe to call it Fall now?       I guess in Colorado, you just never know!  For now, here's to a great week ahead and one that's looking a lot more like Fall in the Rockies!