Last Spring Time Lapsed To Get You Ready For The Change In Scenery This Year

Last spring in St. Albans: How it began

I love to watch nature. It's part of the DNA of a person born and raised in Vermont, I guess. 

During a change of seasons, mostly spring and fall, you see changes every day in the way the landscape looks. Sometimes the change is so subtle you have to really stare to find it. Surprisingly often, it's a jarring change from the day before. 

Spring is especially like that in Vermont. Each spring unfolds differently than all the others. Each one has its own personality.  But it always does arrive, sometimes enthusiastically, sometimes grudgingly. 

Last spring wore both those faces. The first half of spring had to be dragged kicking and screaming into Vermont. Frequently, we had snowy setback in the spring of 2022. Including one on April 19 that buried my yard - and some new daffodils - under 5.1 inches of snow, 

During that slow first half of spring, plants soldiered on. The grass ever so slowly turned green.  Daffodil shoots timidly rose upward from their winter slumber. Winter weather and snow be damned. 

The second part of spring galloped in. The season seamed to rebel against that April 19 snow. The weather moderated immediately after that, then turned downright warm as we headed into May. (We'll just ignore that last brief snowy setback on April 27.

By mid-May, we were in the grip of a mid-summer type hot spell. Temperatures for three days in a row got into the upper 80s, and stayed on the sort of warm, humid side after that. 

And how last spring ended. Deep snow on the ground
now, but soon enough it will look like this in Vermont. 

If anything in nature hadn't made its seasonal transition by then, it hurried up and put on its summer clothes. Well before Memorial Day, spring was over, summer started prematurely.

Gawd knows how this year will work out. It's starting out with a lot of stubborn snow on the ground, but that doesn't mean all that much. 

All I know is this spring will be unique, just like all the others. I've already started taking daily photos. 

The first days of meteorological spring in Vermont have been challenging. As I wrote this on March 15, there's 17 inches of snow on the ground. That's far deeper that at any point during the just-ended winter. 

But, hope springs eternal, pardon the pun. That 17 inches of snow has already started to melt away. Soon, there will be daffodils, then lilacs, then a lush green landscape. It'll happen in a blink of an eye.

So, for encouragement, what follows is how last spring went in St. Albans, Vermont, so you can see for yourself. I hope it gets you revved up for what this spring will eventually brin. 

Here's the video. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that:

Winter To Summer In 48 Seconds

A season in Vermont. How it started....

Yesterday, I returned to working one of my jobs at a Burlington office, after almost exclusively doing that job from home due to the pandemic. 

It's been deemed safe to return to the office, so the Powers That Be moved me back. Whatever. Fine.

While working from home, I decided it would be fun to document the change of seasons. My yard and gardeners were the perfect place to do that. 

On March 6, the snow was still deep on the ground, but a big thaw was forecast. So, starting that day and going on through June 9, I took a photo from approximately the same spot each day.

I strung all the photos into a video lasting just 48 seconds. It's at the bottom of this post. As always, to best view it, click on the arrow, then the YouTube logo to make the whole thing bigger and easier to see.

....how it ended.

It was an aggressive, early spring by Vermont standards, as you will see. But it was marked by a few really, really snowy interruptions, the biggest one popping up on April 21-22. 

After each setback, spring's progress resumed as if nothing had happened.

It's fun to watch the video, focusing on one part of the garden and landscape to watch it change. Then watch it again, focusing on a different spot. 

You see the little brook go from frozen to running fast, to running hardly at all. It bursts into flow briefly again here and there, and quickly recedes.  You can see the garden go from sparse and barren to overcrowded.  

Yeah, I'll have to do some thinning this autumn.

More than half way in, watch the hostas.  They really change fast! The Korean lilac on the left starts out buried in snow and ends in brilliant pink. 

Anyway, here's the video. Enjoy! For some reason it does not appear on mobile devices, so here's a link to the video as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efyDum6B2aM

or

Review: Mike Olbinski's Latest Storm Time Lapse Video Is Sublime

My two favorite storm chasers on YouTube are Pecos Hank and Mike Olbinski.

Pecos Hank doesn't take himself too seriously, and he's a great storyteller. Plus unlike in so many other storm and tornado chasing videos, the ones Pecos Hank gives us are not yell fests.  The focus is on the storm, not the chaser.  

Olbinski is a favorite of mine because he is such an artist. He pays the utmost attention to the details in his cinematography.  

He's the best at capturing the grandeur of both the storms he captures and the landscape those storms affect. 

Olbinski's best video yet, "Shadows In The Sky"  has just recently been released.  I'm not going to show it in this post, as I want to make sure to direct all the clicks directly to the video.  He deserves each and every one of them.  

We all expect a sharp crispness to Olbinski's photography, and that's precisely what you get and more. After all, when he's not chasing storms, he's an accomplished Arizona wedding and portrait photographer. His editing technique comes through expertly.  He can make lemonade out of lemons  

You can tell that some of the storms Olbinski encountered that he used in "Shadows In The Sky" had sub-optimal light and surroundings. You can't expect every storm to do the work for you. 

But the photo editing made those problems disappear without compromising the reality of the storms. Nothing looks fake here.  That he is Arizona based helps, too, as he captures some awesome desert microbursts and haboobs.

With this video, Olbinski took a chance by using music with vocals. There's a big payoff with this. The song, "The Last Goodbye"  by Eric Kinny, featuring haunting vocals by Danica Dora, is the perfect accompaniment  to Olbinski's roiling storms. 

The music adds to the emotional mix of apprehension, awe, foreboding and excitement Olbinski's time lapses offer.  And it builds to a surprisingly satisfying crescendo. 

Weather geeks like myself of course will want to watch "Shadows In The Sky" repeatedly.  I also encourage people who are not the least bit interested in the weather to check it out.   If you like photography and art and fascinating video, this is the required viewing. 

I feel sorry for people who never pay attention to the sky, the clouds, the  heavens. Olbinski is creating converts to the happy club of people who are in awe of what nature can create when it is in a stormy mood. 

Journey From Spring To Winter To Spring, In Photos

Before the storm, April 20

 As promised, we're back to full blown spring here in Vermont after our bout with late season winter. 

For me, it was back to doing garden work yesterday here in St. Albans, Vermont on a cool, breezy, but pleasant evening. That involved assessing the damage from the snow and freeze.  I found that plants can be nice and resilient. 

A series of photos in this post depict our journey in St Albans from spring to winter and back to spring. 

What saved many garden plants around much of Vermont was for most of us, temperatures stayed at or above 25 degrees. 

 It felt colder with the wind chill, but wind chill is for us humans. The snow hurt by crushing tender flowers and stems, but also helped by burying leaves and sprouts to protect them from the cold. 

It's still not perfectly clear yet what died and what survived, but for most plants, they're good. 

2:32 p.m. April 21, the burying begins.

The most disappointing result I've seen is that although all those daffodils around my house survived and continued to bloom, they got mushed down and are now not as pretty and well-arranged as they were.  

Some flower stems failed under the weight of the snow, so the flowers drooped to the ground and are dying. 

The forsythia flowers, a brilliant yellow before the storm, are now brown and dead, but the new leaves sprouting on that bush look fine.  The leaves on the day lily plants are flattened but will perk up as spring progresses.  

I'm cautiously optimistic about the lilacs.  The budding flowers drooped and took on a darker, brownish color in the freeze, making me think they died and we'll have to wait another full year for the glory of the lilacs.

However, the flower buds seemed to perk up in Friday's sunshine, so maybe they survived. We'll see how they do in the next few weeks. 

4:31 p.m April 21 The snow keeps flying 

Thank goodness we don't have much more cold weather to talk about. Today will be sort of warm for the season with highs up into the 60s.

Sunday will bring less rain than originally expected, but there will be showers around under seasonably cool conditions. 

The dreaded "S" word comes back late Sunday night and early Monday, but relax, it will be no big deal. There might be a few wet snow flakes in the air in the hours either side of dawn Monday, but it won't amount to anything. 

Monday will be close to 10 degrees colder than average, but that means highs will be near 50 degrees. That's not too bad.  Temperatures will be near freezing Monday night, but again, not cold enough to cause any further plant damage.

The weather for the rest of the upcoming week looks fairly uncertain, but it will be a little warmer than average, and expect some late April showers here and there. 

Continue to scroll down to see our climb out of the winter blast and back into spring. It's satisfying to see.   

  

8:54 a.m. April 22. The depths of winter. Temperatures were
around 27 degrees when this photo was taken. 

7:31 p.m. April 22. The snow hung on stubbornly all day
but do the warm colors of that sunset portend
better times ahead?

7:13 a.m Friday, April 23. It feels a bit warmer and look
at that blue sky headed our way. Hope?

9:56 a.m. Friday, April 23. The sun begins to do its work

12:25 p.m. April 23. Almost there! 

2:32 p.m. April 23 The daffodils are looking a little
battered, but back to full on spring!