Weather Sticks, Carrots & Rutabagas, And 6 Months!

Six months of Log Cabin Life Living, and loving every single solitary minute!  Hard to believe 6 months have passed...you know what they say, time flies when you're exploring, dreaming, discovering...

Some time ago, we purchased a weather stick for our cabin.  It is a balsam fir tree branch, originally developed by Native Americans to predict weather changes.  It is said that if you put it outside, exposed to the weather, and it will bend down when bad weather is approaching and up when good weather is expected. 

We have had our weather stick attached to one of the porch posts for some time.  I have watched it daily. Each morning, it is bent down and on some days during the summer, rain or shine is stayed bent down. Today is the first day the stick's bend moved from indicating bad weather early this morning to bending upward by the end of the day.  The series of photos below shows the progression from early this morning to early evening...

I get a real kick watching this stick.  I must admit though, I do believe the bend has more to do with humidity than with anything else.  The reason I believe this is, typically, the mornings are humid.  I've posted in the past about our being in a temperate rain forest; this means much moisture and rain.  It makes sense that overnight, as things cool down, and the ground is still warm, we have moisture (dew, almost every morning, lots of dew).  Each morning, my weather stick is bent downwards.  In the summer, as we have high humidity, the stick maintained somewhat of a downward bend...even if the sun was shining and there was not a cloud in the sky!  Only recently has the humidity begun to drop during the day...the mornings are still quite humid, but as the day progresses, the humidity falls.  And thus, an upward bending stick!

The great thing about my weather stick is it confirms for me (according to my belief of how it works) that it is indeed Fall!  The humidity is falling, and  I really, really, really like that!  Have you ever used a weather stick?  Do you think the bend has to do with humidity or something else?

Speaking of Fall, we harvested our first rutabagas and more carrots today.  We roasted them with some of our purple garden potatoes for dinner (along with some chicken). They were yummy!  We still have things to harvest...more rutabagas, turnips, beets, radishes (so far, we have had no luck with them, so we are keeping our fingers crossed that they mature), bush beans (may be too late for them to fruit), and the sweet potatoes we planted in the summer.  The summer garden is coming to an end; the only thing left is some pole beans (they keep growing and growing, I'm not complaining) and the red and orange peppers that we hope will ripen fully.  It's kind of sad to look at the plants in their last stages (not very pretty), but their decomposition will contribute to next year's success, so I can get happy about that:)

Mountain Man and I have begun discussing what we need to do during the end of Fall and beginning of Winter in preparation for next year's garden...yes, indeed, we are discussing next year's garden!  Oh, the possibilities!!!

Thanks for reading my blog, you are the best f/f/r/s/f's, see you tomorrow,
Lise