The Daily Bucket is a nature refuge. We amicably discuss animals, weather, climate, soil, plants, waters and note life’s patterns.
We invite you to note what you are seeing around you in your own part of the world, and to share your observations in the comments below.
Each note is a record that we can refer to in the future as we try to understand the phenological patterns that are quietly unwinding around us. To have the Daily Bucket in your Activity Stream, visit Backyard Science’s profile page and click on Follow.
We moved from Israel to Seattle in summer 2002. At first, there seemed no connection between the mostly-parched piece of Earth we’d left, straddling the boundary between the Mediterranean climate zone and the world’s largest contiguous hot desert — and the mild, wet Pacific Northwest between the Cascades and the Ocean. The dominant native tree in Israel-Palestine’s Mediterranean woodlands, usually takes the form of a bush no more than 3-5m tall. I love that “Common Oak”, but it’s a far cry from the awe-inspiring giants of PNW forests.
Then, after a while, I realized that the two climates are in fact siblings: both have dry summers and rainy mildly-cold winter. Yup, according to the great Köppen, both are members of the Mediterranean climate family! Siblings: Israel-Palestine, with its long bone-dry, often scorching hot summers, and mostly-clear winters interrupted by violent storms, would be the rugged, burly sibling. The PNW, with its short beautiful summers, and long, moody-gray, drizzly winters, definitely the spoiled pretty one. Gender them as you wish :)
Being siblings, sometimes they become more alike. With rapid human-caused global warming afoot, it is the cooler gentler clime who is inching towards its more southerly sibling.
Only a few yards above the flowing creek, sword ferns must kill more and more parts of themselves in order to survive till the rain comes (Sep. 10).