We all are used to see the negative things in life. We can nearly always complain about the weather; It’s either too hot, too cold, too windy, raining the whole summer or snowing again since months now.

It seems weather can’t make it right for us and yet we spend most of the days in our offices, in our flats, ignoring the little details of life.

Living in cities, most of us don’t need to know if the rains are late this year, or when the bushwarblers will start warbling. —Small Seasons Guide

When was the last time you saw the sun rising?
When was the last time you saw a sun set?
When was the exact last time it rained?

Breaking it down

We usually split the year in four seasons and tend to forget two of them, splitting the year into Winter and Summer only. This makes it hard to remember when Summer started, when Winter ended and all the little details in between.

This May in Germany is pretty mixed in terms of weather: It rained at least once per week here, it was cold for a couple of days again, it was hot on others. Since I started farming and growing my own vegetables I carefully document the exact weather for each day. Not just numbers but the minimum and maximum temperature of the day, whether it’s sunny, cloudy, rainy and any special events.

Reviewing

Last Sunday I reviewed last year’s Gardening diary and realised that despite the year before we had unusual dry weather, we still had Thunderstorms bringing rain, cold days inbetween, and while overall warmer and dryer, sowing times, planting times and the first crops which are starting now aren’t too different in time.

There might be a variance of two weeks but if we look closer to the year and learn to appreciate the smaller bits of change during year, we learn to be more positive again.

Sharpening Senses

Growing vegetables introduces a new sense for weather. We learn to appreciate rain, sometimes we really want to have it, and we respect the power of the sun completely differently. We learn to identify the climate and weather for each month separately.

Appreciate Weather is Appreciation of Life

In times of a year going by “in an instant” this detailed view helps us appreciating our own life. Life doesn’t go by in an instant, we choose what to ignore and what to remember.

If we focus only on work and don’t appreciate our outdoor life, if we plan our activities around work, we will remember that it rains whenever we wanted to go outside. We can’t control weather, we’re living in an environment that controls us.

We can plan work around the weather instead of vice versa. We can do our best to not change climate for the worse. But most importantly, we need to see the differences in order to be able to appreciate our environment and own life.