We always did that when I was a child. Fork means mild winter, spoon means wet and maybe need for a shovel, and knife means cold that will cut through you like a knife.

Although we have had snow there was no need for a shovel, but we are breaking records for cold in Oklahoma.

Now that my persimmons have frozen for a few nights, I'm planning to harvest them tomorrow. I'll let y'all know what I find.

I have had a feeling all fall that we are going to have a cold, hard winter, but that is not based on anything other than just intuition. However, I trust my intuition. It rarely lets me down. I'll see if the persimmon seeds tomorrow agree or disagree with my intuition. : )

I've only seen one wooly bear caterpillar this fall, and it was very woolly. The native snakes, too, disappeared fairly early this fall. I didn't see nearly as many of them out in October or November as usual. All these sort of support my gut feeling that winter will not be kind to us.

We are expecting highs here later this week in the 60s and nights in the 40s and 50s, so at least we will have a bit of a warmup here before winter-like weather returns.