The trees which shed their leaves are gorgeous with their autumn tints, and many kinds of them are graceful in the winter with bare boughs, especially just after snow. Writing at the window where I am writing now, my grandfather notes down, 3 January 1847, “Each flake takes up its position and there remains. I hope no wind will disturb it before I can go out and take a view of the country around: which I hope to do, even if it’s up to knees.” I feel that too; but bare boughs always remind me it is winter-time, and I might easily forget that dismal fact down here, if all the trees were green. If I were making a fresh start, I would surround myself with cedar and cypress, pine and fir, holly trees and bay trees, palm trees, yucca and New Zealand flax, Portugal laurel, arbutus, camellia, rhododendron, and other such trees and shrubs. The earliest kind of rhododendron (the Nobleanum) starts flowering here at Christmas. One of mine has nearly a hundred great red trusses of bloom now--January--and the red camellias are coming out. Sometimes on winter days the thermometer goes up to 90° in the sun; and there is seldom any great extremity of cold. My grandfather notes, 11 February 1855, “Thermometer at front door now 20°, such as I never remember seeing before.”
He noted thermometer, barometer, wind and weather, every day in books he kept for that, and every week he sent a copy to my father to compare with his own notes. But my father’s notes were very irregular, as he was often away, whereas my grandfather seldom stirred, at any rate in his later years (1840 to 1870) for which I have his notes. Also, my father met with difficulties that were unknown down here. Instead of the temperature on 11 September 1850 there is a note of “My thermometer stolen from the garden wall last night,” and no more temperatures for several days.
These notes, of course, were of no use except for forecasting in future years; and my grandfather at last perceived they were of very little use at all. He writes on 10 February 1860, “These phenomena used to indicate immediate storms, but really the weather has been such of late that all my old calculations and observations are gone to the winds, so now do not pretend to rely on any of them.”