Kaitiaki Hamon’s Look At Weather And The World

[NOW PLAYING] 😈 Skin O' My Teeth – Kalmah 😈
/Finnish swamp metal covering Megadeth at full throttle: the snow can fall, the teeth stay gritted/

First snow is down and Halloween is Saturday: clear the walk, light the porch, and make your place the safe, bright stop on the block this weekend. 🎃❄️

🌤️ Intro

Hey crew, Kaitiaki Hamon here 🌳🚜. First snow of the season is falling on Edmonton this morning, Halloween lands Saturday, and the new place is slowly turning from a box fort into a home ❄️🎃. Today's picks lean all the way into spooky season, and the coffee is working as hard as the snowblower is about to ☕. Inside you will find the 5 Things Most Pro Landscapers Won't Tell You, the Deep Dive, Today's Message, Today's Weather, the Star Wars galaxy forecast, the Daily Landscaping LOL, and Ron Hairemy's Songs That Guarantee LAWNgevity 🎶. Let's ride. 🚀

🛠️ 5 Things Most Pro Landscapers Won't Tell You

1. 🌿🛠️ Clear light snow with a leaf blower before boots and tires bond it into ice
2. 🌿🛠️ Take the tree-watering bag off before freeze-up, or the ice will take it off for you
3. 🌿🛠️ Salt by pavement temperature, not air temperature: rock salt quits near -9°C
4. 🌿🛠️ Roof-rake the eaves today while the first snow is still light enough to move
5. 🌿🛠️ Clear the street catch basin in front of the property before tonight's freeze locks it

👇 Continue reading to learn more, the full breakdown on all five is waiting for you after the joke.

🌟 Today's Message: Bette Midler and Hulaween: The Queen of Halloween Who Gave New York Its Gardens Back

Every October, one woman owns Halloween harder than anybody alive 🎃👑. Bette Midler, born in Honolulu, Broadway legend, Grammy and Emmy and Tony winner, put on the buck teeth and the towering red wig in 1993 and gave the world Winifred Sanderson in Hocus Pocus 🧹✨. The movie was a modest thing on release and then grew, year after year, into the defining Halloween film of a generation, and Midler did not just star in it: she leaned all the way in, showing up in full costume, year after year, as the host of the spookiest party in New York City 🎭🕯️. For me, that is the first lesson of her story: if you are going to own a season, own it in costume, in public, with your whole chest.

But here is what she saw when the party lights were off 😔🌃. Midler moved back to New York in the mid 1990s and found the green heart of the city trashed and neglected: parks littered and crumbling, and more than a hundred community gardens, built by hand in the neighbourhoods that needed them most, sitting on the city's auction list 🌧️🥀. These were not rich people's gardens. They were the vegetable plots, shade trees, and breathing room of underserved blocks across all five boroughs, and they were about to be sold out from under the people who had grown them 🌱💔. A superstar could have cut a cheque, posed for a photo, and gone home. Midler looked at those gardens and decided she was not going home.

So in 1995 she founded the New York Restoration Project, NYRP, and went to work with her sleeves rolled up 💪🌳. When the city moved to auction off 114 community gardens in 1999, NYRP and the Trust for Public Land stepped up and bought them, saving the whole network in one swing 🏡✊. Since then NYRP has planted more than 65,000 trees, restored parks, and built and protected green space across all five boroughs, deliberately focused on the neighbourhoods with the least green and the most need 🌲🏙️. And she funded the fight the way only Bette Midler would: with a Halloween party. Hulaween, NYRP's annual costume gala running since about 1996, is her flagship fundraiser: the 2022 edition raised over $2 million in a single night, the 2017 gala filled the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and the October 24, 2025 gala marked NYRP's 30th anniversary and honoured Midler herself 🎃💃. She hosts it in full costume every year, in 2025 dressed as her own 1973 album cover, because of course she did.

Thirty years on, the joke has become a skyline 🌆🌿. Kids who were not born when Winifred Sanderson first lit the black flame candle now play in gardens that exist because the Queen of Halloween refused to let her city rot 🕯️❤️. That is the part I keep coming back to, crew: she took the thing she was famous for loving, the costumes, the camp, the spooky season itself, and pointed it like a watering can at the ground under her feet 🎃💧. You do not need a gala or a movie career to run the same play. Plant one thing where people can see it. Clean one corner nobody pays you to clean. Throw one party that leaves the neighbourhood better than you found it, and throw it in costume 📣🌱. The gardens outlive the gala. The trees outlive the headlines. Forward is always a choice, and that means YOU too!

Sources:
https://www.nyrp.org
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Restoration_Project
https://www.nylon.com/life/inside-2023-hulaween-gala
https://www.papermag.com/hulaween-2022-2658574917.html

🌤️ Today's Weather

Edmonton: Today: Snow showers all day under a Special Weather Statement ❄️: currently -2°C feeling like -7°C, humidity 92%, wind NNW at 19 km/h gusting to 32, climbing only to a high of -1°C and falling to -4°C tonight, snow chance 70% by day and 50% tonight for about 4.8 cm total, humidity 89-95% through the day. Sunrise 8:25 AM, sunset 6:08 PM 🌇. The vibe: winter did not knock, it let itself in and put its boots on the mat 🥶. For work and mindset, clear early and clear light, because everything this snow touches tonight becomes tomorrow's ice 💪. Scale of the Pantaloon: L4: "Jeans… No Cap!" (-5 to 5°C) 👖

Aotearoa (Auckland): Today: Spring doing spring things on the far side of the world 🌸: high 19°C, low 13°C, partly cloudy, rain chance 10%, humidity around 74-78%, wind W at 23-27 km/h. Sunrise 6:20 AM NZDT, sunset 7:49 PM NZDT 🌇. The vibe: long light and green growth while we measure our day in centimetres of snow 😎. For mindset, both ends of the whānau world are gardening this week, one of us is just doing it in snow pants 🌏. Scale of the Pantaloon: L7: "Bust Out the Booty Shorts, Baby!" (15 to 25°C) 👖

📅 Next 5 Days: Edmonton – Aeoteroa

Thursday, Oct 29, Edmonton: Morning snow showers easing, high -1°C / low -9°C, snow 40% and about 0.2 cm, humidity 85%, wind NW at 8 km/h 🌨️. The deep cold arrives behind the snow, so anything wet at dusk is ice by breakfast. Pantaloon: L4: "Jeans… No Cap!" | Aotearoa: Afternoon showers and wind, high 19°C / low 13°C, rain 50%, humidity 71%, wind W at 37 km/h 💨. Pantaloon: L7: "Bust Out the Booty Shorts, Baby!"

Friday, Oct 30, Edmonton: Mostly sunny and cold, high 2°C / low -8°C, wintry chance 10%, humidity 82%, wind SSE at 13 km/h ☀️. One bright, brittle working day to finish every outdoor Halloween job. Pantaloon: L4: "Jeans… No Cap!" | Aotearoa: Partly cloudy and properly windy, high 18°C / low 13°C, rain 20%, humidity 61%, wind WSW at 42 km/h, UV very high 🌤️. Pantaloon: L7: "Bust Out the Booty Shorts, Baby!"

Saturday, Oct 31, Edmonton: Mostly sunny for Halloween, high 3°C / low -7°C, wintry chance 20%, humidity 81%, wind SSW at 8 km/h 🎃. Costumes over base layers, the great Canadian tradition, under a cold sky. Pantaloon: L4: "Jeans… No Cap!" | Aotearoa: Mostly cloudy and calm by their standards, high 17°C / low 9°C, rain 0%, humidity 54%, wind SW at 23 km/h ☁️. Pantaloon: L7: "Bust Out the Booty Shorts, Baby!"

Sunday, Nov 1, Edmonton: Morning fog giving way to sun, high 4°C / low -6°C, wintry chance 20%, humidity 71%, wind WSW at 5 km/h 🌤️. A slow thaw day, good for resetting whatever the storm week knocked sideways. Pantaloon: L4: "Jeans… No Cap!" | Aotearoa: Partly cloudy, high 19°C / low 14°C, rain 10%, humidity 63%, wind NNE at 27 km/h, UV very high 🌞. Pantaloon: L7: "Bust Out the Booty Shorts, Baby!"

Monday, Nov 2, Edmonton: Partly cloudy and milder, high 6°C / low -1°C, rain chance 10%, humidity 66%, wind SW at 10 km/h ⛅. The first day all week that feels like a reprieve instead of a warning. Pantaloon: L5: "Time to Break Out the Sweatpants" (5 to 10°C) | Aotearoa: Mostly cloudy, high 20°C / low 15°C, rain 20%, humidity 68%, wind NNE at 28 km/h 🌥️. Pantaloon: L7: "Bust Out the Booty Shorts, Baby!"

⭐ Star Wars Galaxy Forecast

Thursday starts grey and snowing lightly at -1 degree over Morlana One 🏭, where the Pre-Mor Authority's corporate security watches the flurries pile up on the landing pads and pretends this was all in the quarterly plan. Friday clears cold and bright at 2 degrees over Segra Milo 🌿, all misty green valleys and hidden rebel trails, the kind of sunshine that makes a safe house feel almost safe. Saturday, Halloween itself, rides in at 3 degrees over Kef Bir 🌊, the ocean moon where the second Death Star's wreck juts out of the surf, and every trick-or-treater brave enough to knock gets salt spray and a ghost story for their trouble. Sunday fogs at 4 degrees over Kenari 🌴, jungle mist swallowing the paths between the trees, where little B2EMO would tell you the visibility is bad and getting worse, in the saddest voice a droid can own 🤖. Monday warms to 6 degrees, partly cloudy, over the Ring of Kafrene 🪐, traders and couriers haggling in the asteroid shadow while the weather holds its breath. Tuesday stays at 6 degrees over Numidian Prime 🌾, smuggler meadows under big skies, the calmest landing weather of the week. And Wednesday holds at 6 degrees over Niamos 🏖️, the beach world where the waves do not care about anybody's empire, which is exactly the energy to carry into November. Dress for the planet you are actually on, crew, not the one in the brochure 🚀.

😂 The Daily Landscaping LOL

Every morning on the early bus, a sweet little old lady leans over and offers the driver a handful of peanuts from her handbag 🥜🚌. He munches them happily all week, until Friday, when his conscience finally catches up with him and he says, "Ma'am, you are far too kind. But why do you not eat these lovely peanuts yourself?" She just smiles the smile of a woman with a system 😁👵. "Oh, I have no teeth, dear. I cannot chew them at all."

"I just like to suck the chocolate off them first." 🍫🤣

🛠️🌿 The Deep Dive: 5 Things Most Pro Landscapers Won't Tell You 🌿🛠️

1. Clear light snow with a leaf blower before boots and tires bond it into ice 🍂❄️
Today's snow, about 4.8 cm of it, is right in blower territory while it is fresh and dry: a leaf blower strips walks, steps, decks, and parked cars in minutes, long before it melts into the surface. The real enemy is not the snow, it is the traffic: every bootprint and tire track compresses fresh snow into a bonded ice skin that Thursday night's -9°C will set like concrete. Blow it off before anybody walks on it and you skip the chipping, the heavy salting, and the slip claims all in one pass. Save the shovel for the wet, heavy dumps, this first one is a wind job.

2. Take the tree-watering bag off before freeze-up, or the ice will take it off for you 🌳🧊
Slow-release watering bags, the zip-up gator style collars, did their job all summer, but any water left sitting in one tonight freezes solid against the trunk. Ice expansion splits the bag's seams, and the trapped moisture held against bark all winter invites rot and freeze damage exactly where a young tree can least afford it. Drain it, unzip it, and store it dry indoors; the tree is going dormant and its next real drink is a chinook thaw day, delivered by you with a hose, not by a bag of ice. Two minutes now beats replanting in May.

3. Salt by pavement temperature, not air temperature: rock salt quits near -9°C 🧂🌡️
Air temperature is the number on your phone; pavement temperature is the number that decides whether your de-icer works. A cheap infrared thermometer tells the truth: sun-hit concrete can run 5 to 10 degrees warmer than the air, while shaded north steps stay frozen solid on a -1°C day, which is why the same handful of salt melts one walk and does nothing on the next. Rock salt, sodium chloride, also has a practical floor around -9°C pavement temperature: below that it barely melts anything, and tonight's low of -4°C sliding to -9°C tomorrow night is exactly that line. Salt where the pavement is near the melting point, and switch to sand or grit for pure traction where it is colder.

4. Roof-rake the eaves today while the first snow is still light enough to move 🏠❄️
Ice dams are built one snowfall at a time, and the first layer is the easiest one you will ever move. While today's snow is fresh, pull it off the lowest metre or so of roof above the eaves with a roof rake, working from the ground, pulling down and toward you, never up under the shingles. Leave a thin skin of snow, a few centimetres, so the rake never scrapes the shingle surface itself. Every centimetre you clear today is meltwater that cannot pool behind an ice ridge in February and start hunting for a way into the attic.

5. Clear the street catch basin in front of the property before tonight's freeze locks it 🌧️🧹
The grate in the curb in front of a house is the whole street's escape hatch, and right now it is wearing a hat of wet leaves. Today's melt has to go somewhere: if the basin is plugged, the water ponds at the curb, spreads across the sidewalk, and tonight's freeze turns it into a skating rink with your address on it. Clear it from the curb side with a rake or a gloved hand, never stepping out into traffic, and pull the leaf mat back onto the boulevard to compost down. It is two minutes of work the city will never thank you for, and it quietly prevents the worst sheet of ice on the block.

🎶 Ron Hairemy's Songs That Guarantee LAWNgevity 🎵🌱🔥

A disgraced priest, a comedy haunting courtesy of Ned, deathcore machinery, a nightmare on Will Smith's street, te reo fury, and Åkerfeldt ghosting through Katatonia in the Spotlight. Spooky season understood the assignment.

🎸 Momentum
😂 Morale
🧠 Focus
⚔️ Endurance
🎤 Reflection
🌌 Creativity

All music. No filler.
(Except comedy… because everybody needs a laugh.)
No Nickelback.
No Slipknot.
No T-Swizzle.
As it should be.

Canadian Track'O'The Day: "Devil in a Midnight Mass" by Billy Talent (clean ✅). Billy Talent of Mississauga and Streetsville, Ontario, four school friends who became one of the biggest rock bands this country has produced, Juno winners many times over 🇨🇦🎸. This is the opening track of Billy Talent II from 2006, a gothic murder story set at the altar, all wiry guitar and Benjamin Kowalewicz spitting the verses like a man testifying. For me it is the perfect Canadian entry for Halloween week: church bells, bad deeds, and consequences arriving right on schedule ⛪🔔. Play it on the drive to the first snow route of the season and try not to drum on the steering wheel ❄️.

Today's Musical Funny-Bone: "Scary Ned" by Arrogant Worms (clean ✅). The Arrogant Worms of Kingston, Ontario, Canada's comedy institution since 1991, three decades of turning this country's quirks into singalongs 🇨🇦🎤. "Scary Ned" is their Halloween entry: a story song about the neighbourhood's resident bogeyman, the man every kid on the block was quietly terrified of, told with the Worms' trademark mix of affection and absurdity 👻. For me this one is pure trick-or-treat energy, the funny kind of scared, the kind with a candy bar at the end of it 🍬. Play it while the candy bowl gets stocked on Saturday.

Hair Whippin', Head Bangin', Finger Blazin' Therapy: "Entombment of a Machine" by Job For A Cowboy (clean per Spotify ✅, though the delivery is pure death metal violence, so sensitive ears have been warned). Job For A Cowboy of Glendale, Arizona, who broke out of the MySpace era and helped define deathcore with the Doom EP in 2005 🤘💀. "Entombment of a Machine" is the track that carried that EP everywhere: pig squeals, machine-gun drumming, and a title straight out of a nightmare about end-of-life machinery ⚙️😱. For me this is the heaviest three minutes on today's list by a wide and cheerful margin. Play it when the snow route stops being funny and starts being personal ❄️.

Tongue Trippin', Bar Spittin', Beat Killin' Bars: "A Nightmare on My Street" by DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince (clean ✅). Philadelphia, 1988, from the double album He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper, and still the greatest Halloween rap record ever pressed 🎤🔪. Will Smith spins a full Freddy Krueger story in character, funny and genuinely spooky at once, and the song was such a faithful nightmare that New Line Cinema sued over it and the original video ended up shelved with a disclaimer added to later pressings 🎬. For me this is proof that horror and humour are cousins: the scariest verse on today's list is also the one making me grin. Play it with the porch light on, obviously 🎃.

Māori Track: "Rū Ana Te Whenua" by Alien Weaponry (clean ✅). Alien Weaponry of Waipū, Northland, the de Jong brothers, Lewis, Henry, and Ethan, carrying te reo Māori to festival main stages around the world 🇳🇿🤘. "Rū Ana Te Whenua", the ground shakes, comes from their 2018 debut album Tū and tells the story of the Battle of Gate Pā, Pukehinahina, in 1864, where Māori defenders outfought a far larger British force 🌋. Sung in te reo, it is history with its boots on: for me, this is the most powerful four minutes on today's list, a reminder that the ground remembers everything done on it. Play it loud enough to feel the title happen 🥁.

Ron Hairemy Spotlight: "Brave", "Murder", and "Day" by Katatonia ft. Mikael Åkerfeldt (all clean per Spotify ✅, harsh vocals throughout the first two, so consider the congregation warned). Katatonia of Stockholm, Sweden, and these are the three opening tracks of Brave Murder Day from 1996, a single three-part suite that helped invent an entire mood of doom-laden death metal 🌑🎸. The voice doing the growling is a young Mikael Åkerfeldt, borrowed from Opeth because Katatonia's own Jonas Renkse could no longer growl and had moved behind the kit and the clean microphone. I picked this one myself, crew, and I have featured it once before, back on the old blog: some records earn a second hearing the way some graves earn a second visit 👻. Åkerfeldt is, in my words, a god of the night song, and this is him before the crown, already terrifying. Play the three tracks in order, no skipping, as the snow comes down 🌨️.

That's the goal. That's LAWNgevity. 🌱🔥

🌅 Conclusion

Bette Midler threw a Halloween party and a city's gardens lived because of it, which tells you a costume and a cause can share the same pair of shoulders 🎃🌱. The yard version is smaller and it rhymes: blow the light snow off before boots bond it down, get the watering bags off the young trees, salt by pavement temperature, rake the eaves, and free the catch basin before tonight's freeze does its paperwork ❄️. Shoutout to Kyle and Matt and the trucks, to Sammy, and to every household mid-move in spooky season with a cat supervising the boxes 📦🐈. First Halloween in the new home on Saturday, crew, porch light on. If you liked today's blog, be sure to star, speak out, and stay a while for updates. Until next time, this has been Kaitiaki Hamon. Keep your stick on the ice. And may the Force be with you. Always! Ka kite, landscaping whānau!

Sincerely,
Kaitiaki Hamon (Ron Hairemy)

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