Welcome to Whitey's World

It’s one of my favorite little “holidays” today, the day of our earliest sunset here in Eugene. Starting tomorrow, the sun will begin setting slightly later every day until things really speed up around February. Of course, it will be RISING later every day until about the second week of January. The shortest day and longest night of the year still occur on the winter solstice. Hope this makes sense.

Anyway, since sunset times here in the middle-latitudes affect our middle-ATTITUDES the most—unlike sunrise times—it’s only appropriate for us to celebrate this annual celestial phenomenon, no?

It’s been a somewhat strange late-autumn here in Eugene. At least at the elevation where I live—at 500 feet above-sea-level, slightly off the valley floor which in downtown Eugene is about 400 feet a.s.l.—there has not yet been a killing frost. The average first-frost date for Eugene is 25 October. Friends in other parts of town (at slightly lower elevations) reported a light frost several weeks ago, but the first good “killing frost” is still not even in the forecast.

So my nasturtiums in the garden are just having a ball. And, as you see in the photo below, I have tomato plants still blooming and producing fruit on the trellis just outside my kitchen window. Mind you, although this kind of thing happens in, say, the Bay Area far south of us in an average year--with their almost sub-tropical climate--it is highly unusual here in Eugene.

Most of the vegetable garden is now “put-to-bed” for the winter, having spaded the raised beds and then covered them with sheets of black plastic. This protects the soil from compaction by the winter rain; prevents weeds from growing; and prevents the leaching of nutrients from the beds.

I still have wonderful ‘Buttercrunch’ lettuce and Swiss chard in my little plastic houses, both of which have benefited from the mild autumn weather to keep on growing despite the very short days.

Oriental persimmons (Diospyros kaki)--I eat only the oblong Hachiya type; not a fan of the firmer Fuyu type--are a part of most every lunch and dinner dessert these days, either fresh with a dollop of ice cream on top, or as an ingredient in persimmon cookies or persimmon cake. ‘Tis the season for persimmons, you know.

And Life goes on!

(This page updated 09 December 2025.)