Things Change, Part 35212345...

I caught this little snippet from an article in the Union-Tribune:

Fire isn't the only problem facing San Diego County's choose-and-cut tradition.

Farmers are getting older. Most members of the state's Christmas tree association are over 50, Minturn said. The latest victim of age is the 20-acre Van Winkle's Tree Farm in Jamul. For the first time since the mid-1970s, Van Winkle's won't be selling Christmas trees, said Grace Van Winkle, 79. Van Winkle said her sons are taking over the farm from her and her husband, Alfred, 81, and the younger generation decided to focus on the year-round business of nursery plants.

“Our sons didn't have time,” she said.

Every time we leave or return to our home in Lawson Valley, we pass the Van Winkle farm. Ever year until this year, there's been a cheerful little sign along Lawson Valley Road, directing Christmas tree seekers through the side roads to Van Winkle's farm, where they could choose and cut their own tree. We did that many times, starting from before we moved out here.

No more. This year there's a simple, hand-painted sign telling us that the Van Winkle farm no longer has any Christmas trees. They must have been tired of their returning customers showing up, expecting to buy their tree this year. The Van Winkles also used to run a delightful little crafts store full of Christmas decorations; I suppose that's gone as well.

I can certainly understand the reasons that the sons have decided not to continue the Christmas tree farm. If it doesn't make business sense to continue it, then of course they should not. I don't have to like it, though…

Puzzler

The correct answer to last week's puzzler was “Gunter's Rule”. You can see one from my collection here.

For this week's question, we turn to natural history. Nearly the entire country of Estonia has a similar geological makeup: a thick layer of limestone covered by a thin layer of soil (which is chock full of limestone rocks). However, almost anywhere in Estonia you can find rocks (some as large as a house) made of a pinkish granite. These rocks are called “erratic boulders” by geologists, and they are more common in Estonia than anywhere else in the world. How did the erratic boulders get there?

As always, no fair googling…

There and Back Again...

Several of you actually noticed that I haven't posted for a few days – the reason was an evil illness (most likely some sort of food poisoning) that invaded my body on Sunday afternoon and didn't really leave until Tuesday. Yesterday I was feeling pretty puny, but at least not sick. Today I feel fine. It's always great when you're done being sick!

We've got an amazing amount of weather news at the moment. As I write, I'm watching high surf outside my office window – repeated sets of big, rolling breakers crashing into the beach. There's a gaggle of onlookers already (it's only 8 am here), marveling at the power, demonstrated. The forecast is calling for rain, and lots of it, starting late tonight and extending into Saturday. This comes on top of more than two inches just a week ago; from rags to riches, as it were. All sorts of related phenomena are predicted as well: lightning, waterspouts (aka tornadoes over water), flash floods, flooded lowlands, mudslides, rock slides, and caustic slides from the alkaline runoff coming from the recently burned areas. Even snow up in the mountains, above about 5,000 feet! Tomorrow it may be entirely possible to do some exciting body surfing in the morning (in the big surf) and then have a snowball fight in the afternoon (by driving 50 miles or so into the mountains).

I heard a discussion on the radio this morning between some forecasters who were speculating that the oncoming storm could drop as much as four or five inches of rain on us. If that actually happens, we'll have gone from parched conditions five weeks ago to sopping wet by this weekend. Quite a turnaround, and I'm sure hoping we see it…