Weather here in the Valley of the Sun is unlike anywhere else I’ve never known. Take the end of the long Arizona summer heat: whereas in most other places fall comes in sometimes a bit early, sometimes a bit late, here you can count on the second week in October being the week the temps drop from the high hundreds into the low ’90s before they begin a steady drop into the ’70s (and sometimes lower) by the time early December comes around. Likewise, you can 100% count on it that the first cold snap featuring temps close to or even lower than freezing will come the first full week of December.

It’s like clockwork.

Yesterday, I strolled the grounds saying farewell to our beautiful red and yellow bougainvilleas who have hidden our front walls for most of this year. They hate the cold, but they’re so big there’s no way you can cover them with anything. Not that you would want to, of course, because it’s in the dying and the trimming back that you end up with such full and lush bushes. In my little prayer grove I have two large red bougainvilleas on either side of the facing walls; during the summer when they’re full they make such peaceful and lovely rustling sounds when there’s a hot wind blowing. It’s always sad to see them go.

On early Tuesday morning it got down to 30, and it never got warmer than 48 degrees. Out here, that’s cold!

The good thing is that there are really only two cold snaps during our “Arizona winter”: the first week in December, and then sometime in the next six weeks – that one’s less predictable. But after that, that’s all; come mid-January we’ll be back in the ’70s regularly and the upward progression begins all over again.