Friday fabulous foliage - ID of unknown

Welcome to the great midwest. Monday and Tuesday this week the highs were in the 80s (quite summerish 3-4 days ago), right now a sleety snow is falling and there is a good chance of a frost tonight.  Spent yesterday moving tender plants inside.  Our university's arborist stopped by with a leafy twig and asked if TPP could ID it.  Yes, this is part of the service TPP still provides in retirement (experience counts big time).  This was not a tree TPP recognized right off, but it had opposite compound leaves with three leaflets and long pink petioles.  The buds were long and conical covered with imbricate bud scales, so yes, just as you were thinking, very maple like.  A good woody plant key took me straight to Acer, and then on to A. mandshuricum, Manchurian maple.  So both our arboretum and herbarium just gained a new species and a voucher.  This is an ornamental species, just not real well known.  It should turn a nice fall color, if we actually get a fall (as the snow continues to fall).

Weather prognostication - cold winter ahead

Some people put their trust in the Farmer's almanac, others look at woolly worms' wool, but the domestic cat may also have powers of weather prognostication.  After all here it is a rather cool Sept. 7th., and the kitty girls have decided that they need a blanket to nap on, so they found one.  Also notice how well their camouflaged coats work when they are in their natural environment.  They act like they know that cold weather if ahead. The Weather channel can't do any better.

Friday Fabulous Flower - early Iris

A number of people have contacted TPP to  ask the obvious, "Are we having an early spring?"  Yes, and to answer the next question, this is weather, which is variable; it becomes climate when this weather pattern becomes regular and normal. On a world-wide basis we've had a series of some 6 or 7 warmest years on record in a row. The 2016-2017 winter has largely been a no-show here in the upper Midwest. Relatively little snow and not even much rain, so things are pretty dry. This is the 8th year that TTP has kept a record of first flowering dates for the 300 or so perennial flowering plants in our gardens. The other perennials don't flower (gymnosperms, ferns) at all.  Over such a short term the data shows quite a bit of variation year to year, but 2017 is looking very early.  Now once June comes along, things will have evened out.  The witch hazels have always flowered in mid to late Feb. or early March. Last year they flowered on the 17th and 27th of Feb.; this year they flowered on the 12th and 17th, so 5 and 10 days earlier, and they have flowered on the 17th, 18th, and 21st of Feb. before.  Same with the crocus and snowdrops.  The squill started flowering a week earlier than ever before, but the real shocker is today's FFF Iris reticulata. It started flowering on the 26th of Feb., a full 2 weeks earlier than ever before. That's a lot this time of year. TPP featured this Iris a couple of years ago.  It's really only doing well in one place in our gardens where the bulbs have multiplied quite nicely, and this is pretty cheerful early in the spring.  A couple of nights of below freezing temperatures have not done it any damage.

February weather & gifts

So far the winter season of 2016-2017 has been quite mild.  Very little snow; none in January.  And now a significant thaw in February with high temperatures reaching the 50s and low 60s.  Lots of our early spring flowering shrubs are exhibiting bud swelling, and one witch hazel is already in flower.  Snowdrops are in bloom in a neighboring garden, but again none of this is too extraordinary given the mild temperatures.  However if it's too mild for too long in February, cold weather in March will be quite damaging.  Several shrubs in our gardens have been planted in shady areas deliberately to forestall early flowering because these species tend to flower at the first thaw and then get frozen.  Rather have them flowering late than getting frozen. 
Hopeless romantic that he is TPP was constrained by his wife's wishes regarding any gifts for Valentine's day: don't buy me anything sweet and fattening; don't buy me any flowers (we have several things in flower now); and just back from a vacation doesn't leave her in a mood for dining out (yet).  But yet a guy wants to show his affection, so what better than a new implement of destruction/gardening tool?  Buy candy in a heart-shaped box if you must, fellows, but getting her a new garden toy that looks very mean, that's a show of affection.  If you garden you probably recognize the brand; it isn't shown or mentioned because of our non-endorsement policy (they haven't offered to pay!). If you can't do something useful with this bad boy, you don't have much of a garden. Having a reversible handle usually means the "lefty" can use it OK.

Nighty night nightshades

This hasn't been the best growing season for nightshades: tomatoes, eggplant, chili peppers, petunias, etc. Both the combination and the sequence of weather seems to be not to their liking. Firstly it was too wet and not warm enough early on, and tomatoes being grown by some of the best gardeners TPP knows got no further. TPP had  his nightshades in containers, so the extra drainage kept them from completely crashing. Nightshades are also susceptable to quite a number of diseases particularly wilts and blights. Those along with mildews got off to a great start during the wet weather of early summer, and now the plants look terrible, their vigor is waning, and they won't last much longer although usually gardening is fine through the end of September around here. In particular it was a bad year for petunias, and the wave type seem to have done particularly poorly. In contrast verbenas that sometimes struggle are doing quite well. Remember that these nightshades are not tough plants, but cultivated softies. Now that the weather is cooler and drier, which requires some watering, plants should be doing well, but they are already too far gone. So for about 5 weeks tomatoes were abundant. There were plenty of eggplant for a month; the plants do show some signs of rebounding. Chili peppers produced well for about 6 weeks and now some varieties are almost leafless, others are recovering and will probably provide a few fruit. The petunias are just shot; wave goodbye. Glad our survival doesn't rely on potatoes this year, although strangely, perhaps because they are harvested earlier, some decent crops are being reported.

Apple quest

After a week of unseasonably warm weather, a dousing of nearly three inches of rain, the weather has turned a bit unseasonably cold. Yes, you can average our weather, but the great mid-west of North America never gets average weather. So Saturday was going to be a bit cool and maybe a bit wet, and this is a university town, so football, and homecoming, so best to get out of Dodge. All in all, a good day for an apple quest to southeastern Michigan. Locally the early varieties of apples did well, and the Jonathons and Jonagolds were excellent, and the Phactors recommend you try Crimson Crisp if you get the chance, but the later varieties just did not fair so well. Thus if the Phactors were to have Northern spies, it would take a quest to the Tree-Mendus fruit farm in Eau Claire, MI. They have over 200 varieties of apples under cultivation, quite amazing diversity, and you get tastes! The Phactors managed to beat the homecoming parade out of town, and then it drizzled on us all the way to Michigan. Hungry and hoping the rain would let up, the Phactors stopped for lunch in an Applebee's. But it didn't. Still you don't drive 4 hours to get your favorite apples and just give up. Perhaps you have gathered that most of the apples are U-pick, and nothing quite like a cold, drizzle to make it an adventure. The dear woman working the orchard outpost should get a medal for remaining cheerful doing a rather miserable job while someone else got to make the mulled cider by the barn's fireplace. Not to be deterred by the cold and rain, the Phactors picked apples, 4 half-bushels and fortunately northern spies are largish apples so you don't have to pick so many to fill a bag. Now here is the question. If you were picking some of these apples for friends, how much above the purchase price do they owe you for the transportation and picking in miserable weather? As the trip neared it's end the rain finally stopped. So checking the score, the Phactors are squashed up (from a field trip 2 weeks ago) and appled up for the fall and winter. Next up, what you do with this bounty.

Soggy September weather

Usually September is a fairly dry, fairly nice weather month. August had above average rainfall, so things entering September were not too dry. TPP made the observation 3 days ago that some rain would be nice or a few things would need some watering.  Hoo boy!  With a total rainfall approaching 4" in the past 48 hours, everything is well watered now OK. Usually this time of year the lily pond needs some topping up, but now a couple of inches will have to be drained off. Newly planted greens will have had plenty of water. On the down side, this much rain clearly demonstrated where the chimney flashing problem is located, and a contractor will have to be hired to fix things up on the roof side and to replace old (ancient) plaster below that has been degraded gradually over a number of years dating back to before our ownership. As they say, when it rains, it pours. Not sure how this will affect our prairie or the maize crop that is predicted to be a bin buster. With cooler and wetter than average weather, this area may receive an early winter.

Date by which 100 plants flower fluctuates wildly

Yesterday was lovely, and the Phactors ate dinner on the patio with friends.  The center piece was a Caesar salad with fresh romaine lettuce and a dynamite home made salad dressing (a Sheila Lukins cookbook recipe). Two dark pink tree peonies were in flower as well as the one flower the squirrels did not eat was open on the big-leafed magnolia.  One of the metrics TPP keeps is the date by which the first 100 plants in our gardens flowers (out of pretty close to 300 flowering plants). This year the 100th plant was magnolia vine (Schisandra chinensis, a basal angiosperm!).  The database is now in its fifth year and the total lack of a pattern or trend or consistency is quite evident.  In 2012, the 100th plant flowered on March 25th. Sorry, this isn't intended to mock readers waiting for the ice to melt out of the Bay of Fundy. Last year the 100th plant to flower wasn't reached until May 5th, and this year it was on May 7th!  So in just 5 years of data the earliest and latest date on which the 1st 100 plants flowered differs by 43 days!  Welcome to a continental climate folks - highly variable, highly changeable. Now we be needing some rain, and please without any twisters.

Yo-yo weather here in Lincolnland

Here in the upper Midwest long time residents will tell you that if you don't like the current weather just wait a few minutes and it will change.  Today the high temperature will be just above freezing, and it's almost balmy in comparison to the severe cold and wind chills of the previous week.  Now another Arctic front will arrive in a couple of days to repeat this pattern.  This is producing temperature swings of around 30 C.  These cold snaps are not actually unusual or more severe than expected for this  region, however they have been less and less common in the past two decades so now these Arctic fronts seem colder and more severe.  The amount of snowfall has not been all that great, but the extended cold has kept what snow we have gotten on the ground. This resulted in a near assault on our person by anxious squirrels and birds while restocking all of the feeding stations. In addition to feeding the wildlife, it provides wishful cat entertainment.  People this year have taken an inordinate interest in the gold fish that occupy our lily/lotus pond. Naturally, the pond is frozen over, but a compressor is continuing to pump air into the pond so it should not become anaerobic. At a recent gathering of garden devotees, everyone wanted to talk about potential damage to plants.  Well, it's a wait and see game, just like with the fish. Right now the temperature is falling, fast, so the Arctic front is arriving and with it a lot of wind. How nice.

Monday morning matters?

Monday is off to a slow start.  TPP has a mid-morning appointment right across the street, so going for coffee or going to the office would just be a waste of time.  Better to waste time blogging.
Item 1: Graded exams.  Quite a bit of time was spent this weekend reading the first exam in my economic botany class.  These are upper class students who obviously find botany interesting, and economic botany does a good job of convincing people of that.  The results were pretty good in fact the best class TPP has had in years (10 of 24 aced the exam).  Had to work hard, almost to the point of quibbling, to deduct 1 point from one exam, in two half-point increments to demonstrate that a perfect paper is a theoretical construct.  You should know that TPP grades one question at a time and has no idea who wrote what and no idea how a particular student or exam is doing.  Two other students will be surprised to find they did not get the highest grade.
Item 2: International Blasphemy Rights Day - Sept. 30.  TPP has never had the urge to hurt anyone's feeling about their particular religious beliefs, but in places with blasphemy laws and a state-supported religion, sometimes just being an evolution-teaching biologist is enough to break such a law because science causes some religious people discomfort.  Boo-hoo.  Glad the people who want the USA to be a Christian nation remain a minority, although it would be a grand fight over which flavor would get top billing.
Item 3: Barely some rain event.  TPP was completely correct. The recent rain totaled a scant 1/4 inch.  Some bulbs needed planting and beneath the mulch is was just dry.  Terrible. 
Item 4: Garden work.  Planted some yellow-flowered trout lily in the woodland garden.  Transplanted some Japanese peony 2-year old plants from a seed bed to the woodland garden.  Decided where to plant the Persian ironwood (look back a blog - too lazy to link it).  Did some weeding. How do they grow so well when it's so dry?  Removed tropical floating fern from the lily pond to transport to the university glasshouse for the winter.  Harvested some very fine oak-leafed lettuce and had a dynamite BLT. 
Item 5:  Mrs. Phactor tried a new recipe, a tian.  A baked casserole of slices of tomato, zucchini, salami (rustic Italian), and mozzarella cheese, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with mixed herbs.  Wonderful.
Item 6: Shopping.  TPP needed some clothes so he went shopping which he does religiously, about twice a year. A more interesting sale was at the local garden shop, which  had an end of season, "under construction" sale, but there wasn't much that we needed.  Mrs. Phactor bought decorative gourds and a couple of colorful mums.  TPP was called on to be the resident expert.  They like me at this establishment.
Item 7: Summer continues.  Highs in the low 80s for the next few days!  It's the end of September and it's still summer.  Tropical plants get to extend their summer outdoor sojourn another few days. 

The mid-west is wet

Drove across northern Missouri yesterday to get to KC.  The overall impression is one of a giant mud puddle.  All in all pretty wet places were getting inches of rainfall, and not all of it is coming down gently.  In general this is quite a depressing and annoying weather pattern this year, and quite different from the weather of a year ago.  Our field work is suffering, our gardens are suffering, and the grass is growing.  Presently the prairie canopy is at about 1 meter, and we had to add our tall flags to plots so that they can be found fairly easily at least for another month or so.  Does TPP have to mention that one of our treatments is nutrient augmentation?  Oh, will this make things grow?  Oh, yes!  Our soil is on the heavy side and when it's wet it gets sticky, and you just shouldn't mess with it, but you still want to get some stuff planted.  The windows of opportunity have been few and brief.  It's been easier to keep up with mowing the lawn, and that's been hard enough.  Farmers aren't just dealing with wet soil; they've got flooding.  A lot of flood plain agricultural fields are way too wet for planting, or flooded, and if they have been planted, they will probably need to be replanted, but it's getting late in the season to plant maize.  Because of the demand and the price, maize has been plenty popular, so lots of frugal farmers have bought their seed already to get a discount, so it won't be easy, or cost effective, to switch to soybeans.  Planting early on flood plains is a bit risky, but the USA's crop insurance program basically assured farmers of getting 80% of their anticipated sale no matter what, so while everyone likes the idea of insurance to iron out the ups and downs, the current program seems to encourage risky agricultural behavior.  These are the things you think about when driving across the great midwestern farm belt.  Also observed some very poor conservation where rather steep fields were plowed without any contouring or other erosion suppressing practices, and torrents of reddish-brown water were washing off of them.  Some farmers need a dope slap; why they treat soil like everyone treats water, as if it were an inexaustable resource. In one area the wind preceding a storm was kicking up clouds of dust, top soil, and even in flat places like these fine soil erodes at a rate of 5 tons per acre, yet many people fail to believe this is happening.  And then another line of storms moves in, and you begin to listen to the radio in case of tornado warmings.  About the time you think perhaps things aren't being so violent, you pass a wooded area by a river where the tops of all the trees have been snapped off, recently.  So it was a bit of a surprise when the sky turned a funny color this afternoon, blue.  Delightful, as the heat and humity soared.  Welcome to the great midwest!

Soggy Memorial Weekend

Oh, the gardening plans we had!  Very ambitious, indeed, but over 3 inches of rain will sort of dampen your enthusiasm for gardening.  Things are so wet that water is standing in all the low areas and not only did very little gardening get done, but it will be days before things are dry enough to plant some things.  Well, this puts the Phactors way behind schedule, and as if that weren't bad enough, a couple of editors are telling TPP that he's behind schedule too.  Quite a number of weeds met their demise due to Mrs. Phactor's diligence.  Clearly she's a mudder.  And the weather has been cool too; in the 30s just 4 nights ago. It's keeping some cool loving plants in flower longer, but pushing back the flowering time for others.  A couple of large Deutzia have been in a flowering holding pattern for several days as well as a Kousa dogwood.  Ah well, it's a very different year from last year which was so warm, so early, and this year is late. 

Wintery mix

What could be more delightful?  Nothing improves upon the dreadful mid continental weather more than wintery mix, that combination of precipitation that occurs when the temperature is hovering right at freezing and things could go one way or the other.  In the search for alternative terms, ones that can be printed here on a family blog, TPP did not find any obvious winners.  Slushify.  Slushify does sort of have a nice sounding feel to it, a bit of cold onomatopoeia (did that get enough vowels in it?).  A colleague, obviously one with a young child, suggested ooblek, as if TPP wouldn't know the stuff outside was the wrong color and has a different melting point.  Crud was suggested at the coffee shoppe, but that more describes the person's mood and feelings about our late winter weather.  With spring break looming a student suggested that wintery mix sounded better if you thought of it as a frozen alcoholic concoction to be consumed at some beach bar.  Actually TPP rather likes this suggestion.  A round of Wintery Mix for the crowd!  You can hear the blender whirring right now!  Hmm, now all we need is an appropriate cocktail recipe.  Is it time for a cocktail contest?  Yes, we're taking suggestions for a new cocktail called Wintery Mix!  And no, your suggestions for a drink named Ooblek must be saved for another time when everyone is really, really desperately thirsty.  The winning cocktail recipe will be celebrated on these pages thus receiving world-wide acclaim.

Crazy weather

Here in the upper midwest, if you don't like the weather just wait a day and it'll change.  Fortunately the predicted ice storm failed to fully freeze leaving the predictors' record of failure for major weather events intact.  Yesterday the high temperature was 64F and new record for January 29th by 3 degrees.  Thunderstorms swept through the region giving us about an inch of badly needed precipitation.  This mid-winter thaw came immediately after the coldest week of the winter.  This morning the temperature was still in the 50s but the low tonight is predicted to be about 28F, and the low tomorrow around 2 F, a change of 62 degrees in a bit over 48 hours.  As for my snowdrops in flower, this is not good news because as tough as they are single digit freezing temperatures may be too much for them.  Lots of bulbs are pushing up, and if covered with a layer of snow they would be fine, but sticking up bereft of any insulation some leaf tips will get damaged.  The lily pond is now quite full and while almost completely frozen over previously, most of the ice has melted.  Whoosh.  The sound of battling fronts, warm, moist ones from the southwest and brutally cold dry ones from the northwest, some of that imported Great White North weather.  So what's our border policy on letting in this foreign weather? 

Weekend Fun!

Here were the main activities of the weekend for our household.

1. A virus, how annoying.  Not TPP, his trusty PC.  It has been a good long time since it has contracted an infection, and you get rather complacent, but fortunately most software has automatic updates although no anti-viral or anti-malware installed saw this one coming.  And from where?  It was the usual scanning for science news and recipes type of morning.  Should you be ever suspicious of squash soup recipes?  And for all my years on the internet, and it is many, what is the creator of such malicious software gets out of it.  It’s like breaking windows.  Other than a delight in sheer destruction of something not so difficult to break, a feeble victory at best, and annoying people you don’t even know, where is the payoff? 

2. Leaves.  Just as the fall color really begins to appear a 24-hr windy front moves through the area and reduces tree crowns by 50%.  On the good news side, a newly planted tupelo is showing real potential for outstanding fall color.  On the other hand, drought damage has greatly reduced the fall color of the witchhazels.  And of course, all the leaves in the world seem to end up in the lily pond.

3. Rain.  After a brief effort, maybe about 150 bulbs got planted.  Probably 1.5-2 inches in total. So the default activity was house cleaning, an activity largely ignored during gardening season.  Why clean a house if you’re only going to be in it to sleep?  Somehow quite a layer of dust and cat fuzzies had managed to accumulate, and we do expect a foreign house guest later this week.

4. Garden cleanup.  Time to ditch the summer garden plants; nothing more to come from tomatoes (3 cherry tomatoes eaten on the spot), peppers, beans, eggplant, okra.  At least when your garden is close to a total flop you don’t have much to clean up.  Only the cold frame greens remain.  Made a totally dynamite spicy pork and bok choi stir fry, and it was fairly easy and delivered a Thai flavor.  Definitely a keeper recipe, one of those sleeper recipes that you turn past in a cookbook because it never quite captures your imagination until you have a bunch of bok choi and some frozen coconut milk to use and  your pragmatism turns to discovery. 

5. Bonsai trees.  Several of TPP’s bonsai trees are pretty tough and seem to do better is given some fall cool weather, but there is a limit so the indoor migration began.  The Pittosporum needed repotting, and that was completed just before the next big squall came through and TPP had to help the neighbors secure their garden shed (plastic on tubular framework) that had gotten blown over by a sudden gust.  The limb cleanup will result in a substantial pile for composting as it always does.

Petunias finally encounter the Grim Reaper

The petunias in the window boxes outside our front bedroom windows after producing a pink cascade for at least 5 months died two nights ago. This is not so surprising actually since petunias are not cold hardy at all, so the first good frost or freeze of the fall always does them in. But what was surpising is the date, November 18th, a very late date for the first killing freeze (about 25 F). The weather had flirted with frost a few times, but here in our urban heat island it was never frosty enough. Most gardeners recognized how late the season was in a variety of ways, and then they nod and say "global warming". While the Phactor is positive global warming is real, such departures from normal averages are just weather. Over the long haul more frequent deviations produce a climate trend. Models of global warming predict more extremes, hotter hots, colder colds, wetter wets, dryer drys, early snow storms, late freezes, and so on, but greater amplitude in weather may not cause a change in the means as they tend to average out. 2011 had a late spring, cold and wet, and it pushed flowering back (in comparison to 2010) but then a very late mild fall that was very good for the baby bok choi.

Highly conflicted on today's weather

When you are a plant person and your area is suffering from a drought, you want and hope for a really rainy day, but why today! Once a year the Phactor drags out his Cajun cooking gear and out under our big trees, he whips up a big pot of fish soup for a bunch of friends, and now it looks like the hoped for rainy day has come on fish soup day. Thus the emotional conflict, the-rain-very-much-wanted-but-just-not-today conflict, after all what would it hurt if it rained on Monday or Tuesday when classes occupy me all day? So the soup preparations will continue, and no one will complain about the rain, certainly not the plants, but the annoyance remains.

Weather Forecast - Snow

Although the upper midwest of the USA does have real winters, they are nothing in comparison to the winters of my youth in upstate New York, in particular the snow belt along the southeastern shore of Lake Ontario. Today there are all manner of dire predictions of 8-18 inches of snowfall during the next 24 hrs. But generally, in fact, mostly, the actual snowfalls are quite short of the mark. Apparently the weather people like scaring everyone into good behaviors and smart actions, although these SW to NE storm tracks are difficult to predict and if you are right in the path, you can get clobbered while an area only 50 miles away from the narrow storm track will only get a couple of inches. In upstate New York when they warned you about heavy snow (no one would notice just 6-8 inches more) you immediately ran out and bought beer, bread, peanut butter, ping pong balls, you know all the necessities so that you could survive if a big snow fall was realized. During the Phactor's freshman year in college on the shores of Lake Ontario an actual snowfall of 104 inches (+260 cm) was recorded in 48 hrs. We could toboggan out a 2nd story window, and it took a week to dig out. Good thing the lake was there so you had a place to put it all. And even more impressively, that is not the snowfall record for the state. A little town to the east, Red Creek perhaps, received 78" of snow in just 24 hrs. So no worries there except that anything more than 5-6 inches is more than they can deal with. When you have to tie a fishing pole to your car antenna and put a flag on it so people can see you coming up to an intersections, why then you've got some snow. The image is of a colleague's driveway.

Great/Awful Fall Weather

The weather for the past 5 weeks has been both great and awful at the same time; great temperatures, warm days, cool nights, no frosts yet, sunny, beautiful, glorious, but the near complete absence of rain has produced a mini drought, and people who did not faithfully water shallow-rooted and/or newly installed plants will find come spring a lot of "winter kill". Farmers have been overjoyed with these weather conditions and the crop harvest has been going very well indeed. Yesterday it was obvious a front was moving in, and the morning dawned dreary and over cast, and now some rain has come, not too heavy, not too light, and maybe if we are lucky it will keep up all day and all night and all of tomorrow. After 5 weeks of essentially no rain, the ground is parched and it will take a lot of rain to soak in deeply. If the area only gets a half inch or so, it will fool the amateurs, who will now have an excuse to not water. And already the weather goof balls are saying "maybe the rain won't last too long" as if this were a bad thing. Strangely it seems that weather people are never garden people. Rain is just what the bok choi needs. This late Indian summer will push the cool weather fall chores way into November, and this isn't good because it's only one month before the Phactor heads out to Costa Rica with my rainforest ecology class. Too little time and too many things to do!

Fall weather in Lincolnland

Ah, fall comes to colorful Lincolnland! The beautiful browns of soybeans and maize ready to harvest, the gray overcast skies, the rain drops on your windows and head, drab yellows of senescing leaves, and maybe the worst October weather ever! The first two weeks of October have some of the most reliably good weather here in Lincolnland. This information came from Peter Raven, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, who had his staff conduct a survey of over 150 years of weather records. Peter used this data to schedule the Garden's annual systematic symposium because it also coincided with a time period when the gardens look very good. Oh, but this year the weather gods are getting even by teaching us about the law of averages. And of course, while all of the Phactor's students know that "it never rains on a field trip", it can often rain on your field research. So we are struggling to collect the specimens used for the data of an experimental prairie research project, and the only thing it hasn't done so far is snow. Hmm, yes, we got snowed on last year, but that was way into November, and the student, whose research project required this late season foray into the field, dutifully noted, "well, it didn't rain". So well put.