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Spring can be both a fair or a fickle season-or both-and it doesn't always give us a clue as to what its plans are. Such was the case this past week when the previous week ended a warm spell with the sudden arrival of a cold front, taking temperatures from the comfortable 60's and even 70's down to the freezing point. My normal morning outing with the dogs resulted in a neighbor stopping his mower to come over to say "hello". He had been doing something next to his shed that looked like gardening, and he told me that his entire project had been wiped out by the previous night's cold weather. Not only had a groundhog eaten what was growing, but now the cold had cinched the new plants that he had just set out. He was not impressed.
However his was not the only story of garden hardship. When a second neighbor came along today walking his black Lab, he seemed agitated. The wooden tool handle gave him something to keep slapping into his palm as he shook his head. It took only a few minutes for him to disclose the cause of his upset: last night's frost had killed off all the vegetable plants he had raised indoors from seed. Everything was dead. This was not a beginning gardener. No, he had a very large and established plot on which he grew corn, tomatoes, peppers, and more. Although his dog did a wonderful job of getting rid of groundhogs, she could do nothing about the frost. May is the month that everyone looks to as uplifting. After all it follows those April showers to bring us those eagerly awaited flowers. But I remember one May that did exactly the opposite. One Mother's Day we had all the parents over to our house for dinner. Being the second Sunday in May, the holiday is usually warm. That year it was VERY warm, and since the table I was using then was rather small I had taken the house plants outside to give me more room to set down side dishes on other furniture. It helped give me the space I needed. But when dinner was over and everyone had gone home, I was tired. Instead of bringing all the houseplants back inside I decided to let them get a breath of fresh air, and left them outside. I fell gratefully into bed that night, planning to bring in my "refreshed" houseplants that morning. But when I woke up… DISASTER! A cold front had moved in overnight, taking the air temperatures from nearly 80 to the freezing point. My beloved houseplants were covered with a layer of frost! They were irretrievably DEAD. These included African violets that had made it from New Jersey to New Hampshire and back again. The Spider Plant's hanging "spiders" were totally limp. And the Jade Plant-a symbol of good luck-didn't have any that night. I was heartbroken. It was my own fault, putting my need for sleep ahead of the plants' need for warmth. Well, there was nothing to be done about it now. I could only hope that the plants that were growing outside did not succumb to a similar fate. Mercifully, the daffodils had enough cover under the evergreen trees to be spared. The Spirea Van Houten was not yet showing buds, and I hadn't set out any annuals yet. However I was still sad about my loss. Thinking about my two unfortunate neighbors, I wondered who else on our little corner had been hit by the sudden frost. Certainly it made no difference to the farmer whose corn fields abutted our properties. Tractors had been running there regularly getting ready to plant this year's crop. Azaleas in vivid colors decorated other houses that I could see, and I will have to look and check if they suffered any problems in the two cold nights. My dogwood trees and the orchard had already bloomed, and they had returned to the standard spring green of their leaves. No problems there. And of course the thistles, pesky weeds that they are, still poke up around the new walkway. Weeds are like cockroaches: they never die! I had planned to buy some petunias at a garden center, just to have something colorful growing next to my new walkway. Now I think I'll wait a while; maybe until June? TO MY READERS: this article appears in time for the day selected by the government to celebrate Memorial Day. In honor of this, an old friend of mine, himself a Viet Nam veteran, sent me these cartoons (Copyrights Noted). Please enjoy as you reflect on the meaning of the day.   Just Mom |
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| Cartoon Courtesy of Coffee Cup Software |