Short Growing Season

I was looking for leaves in the orchard yesterday; today I was looking at four inches of snow. When I got Ellen out of bed, she said that it looked like it was going to be a cold autumn, with winter on the way. My brother-in-law marks his seasons by counting "fire free" days—by which he means days on which he doesn't have to start the wood stove. When I talked to him last week he'd already recorded three or four "fire free" days on the east coast. I guess snowmaggedon is over out there. Not here, we've not been "fire free" since the end of September.