In Tennessee we have 5 Spring Winters:
Redbud winter in early April
Dogwood winter in mid to late April
Locust winter in early May
Blackberry winter in mid-May
Linsey-Woolsey Britches winter in late May
We've had Redbud winter already and the worst of Dogwood winter when we had three nights of freezing temps, one night down to 27 degrees.
We learned our lesson years ago and don't plant now until May 1st and even that can once in a blue moon be risky.
But all our trees and bushes, large or small, have some blackened tips where there was tender green growth.
Our pretty little Japanese maple planted last fall, the fourth one RH has planted here, is no exception.
That sweet little baby! How I hope she snaps back.
While the 10-day forecast doesn't predict more frost, it looks like we have another week of Dogwood Winter. And that's fine by me. We'll have to keep the heat on at night a little longer but no air conditioning in the daytime. And I have no doubt that summer, when it comes, will be long and hot so why long for it too soon.
Do you have these odd winters where you live? Is it summer one day and winter the next? Or do you typically stay deep in winter until Memorial Day? Our daughter in Montana had snow last June!
I've been reading the April 1951 issue of Ladies' Home Journal this week and they printed a few lines from Robert Frost's New Hampshire. It reminded me that I don't have any of his poetry books on my poetry shelf and made a note to order this famous collection.
I never know exactly how to handle quotes from poetry--do you print them exactly how they are printed in a book or magazine?--but here they are, just like the Journal printed it, simply because after reading them I said to myself, "Isn't it God's truth!"
You know hot it is with an April day:
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of
May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle
of March.
Robert Frost in New Hampshire
Frost is always one of my favorite poets...so simple and clean his words and meanings...now Spring is a multifaced...B....and there is no way else to treat her in Chicagoland. LOL, we had 5 inches of snow and mid twenties temps yesterday---and that is why I don't pull anything off my flower beds until mid May! Lovely post, you are far kinder to Spring than me. Grins, sandi
ReplyDeleteSandi, I'm sure I would be singing a different song if I lived where you and other blog friends lived where winters are so long! And those of you who are gardeners must be itching to plant. Hang in there, it will come!
DeleteI hope your trees will be OK and bounce back! Of course, here in northeastern IL, it is much colder than it is in TN. I probably won't be able to plant anything until mid-May. It's still cold here at night. I just checked our extended weather forecast and it looks like we still have a lot of nights that are down to about 31 degrees, but there are some 40's creeping in there, too.
ReplyDeletexoxo
I think our trees and shrubs must be fooled too early into putting on new growth here. For a week I watched three different kinds of bees swarming over the holly bushes at my windows that were covered in white blooms. Now the blooms are black from frost and I wonder what there is for them to feed on, or if we'll have red berries next winter for the mockingbirds. Maybe your weather is more predictably reliable than ours is!
Deletein northern Minnesota when I was 17... I walked carefully (per his instruction) in each of his footsteps... across the deep and still frozen but thawing ice of the Kettle River.
ReplyDeleteit had a swift current. and if we had broken through they wouldn't have found our bodies in a long time if ever. that was April 5, 1963.
he died of a heart attack that next week at work.
we brought his body by train back to Oklahoma and it was like going forward in time!
everything was in bloom. it was very warm. it had been spring there for weeks.
then we went back to Minnesota to finish school. snow. some ice. and still winter.
it certainly tweaks one's brain. I've never forgotten that. the climate of my grief.
I guess wherever we are it simply is what it is! until it isn't.
our current era seems to be rather like a roller coaster everywhere.
Oh, Tam, what a sad thing for a 17 year old girl to go through. I've read your stories off that time before but your lines here--"the climate of my grief"--reveals the sorrow that young woman you were went through not long after you two, father and daughter, went through together on the frozen river. I'm sure you followed him in complete trust and then so soon the strong military man who was your father was gone. How could that not have rocked your world forever? I remember you told me that he had had the flu not long before that so this time of crisis in the world must bring back all those memories.
DeleteWe are all indeed on a roller coaster, one that we don't know when will end. Be safe, dear friend.
The rule of thumb here is to plant on Mother's Day. And then be ready to cover plants at night, if necessary, until June. And then have buckets ready to cover tender flowers for when afternoon hailstorms set in! :)
ReplyDeleteIt must seem like a short summer sometimes, Karen! I follow one blogger from Door County who says it's Memorial Day there before little chance of frost. But hailstorms, are they a regular thing there?
DeleteYes, pretty much. They aren't always damaging, but it's not surprising when it does happen. They can be rough on vehicles, too!
DeleteHere in the Med, spring is pretty predictable, maybe because we rarely get snow, unless one lives on a mountain top. So, if we keep an eye on the melting stages of that snow, we kind of know, when we can start thinking about what flowers will beautify our gardens, and that's EXACTLY where I am, now! Saturday, was the first day I got my hands in the dirt of each flower pot on the patio, weeding, pruning, and watering and today, I was awarded with two pink geraniums!
ReplyDeleteBUT, I JUST viewed Jonna Jinton's current vlog (#40), in which she talks about EXACTLY what you do: the fickle nature of April, where one day you wake up to, what seems, instant pastures of green, and the next, a winter wonderland, once again! I always love her 'take' on things, as I know both you and Tam do, so here's the link to that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeLlHsFkM-U
Tam, your story about your beloved father, and how you once experienced the sudden changes of the seasons broke my heart. As Dewena wrote, that surely must have been such a sad and painful time for you and I wonder if even today, such extreme weather fluctuations bring to mind that trek in the frozen river, following in the footsteps of your dad, an experienced military man, who safely led you to your destination.
Frost was my first 'favourite' poet. It was because of 'The Road Not Taken', which I have also featured on Poppy View, that I was smitten with the genre, and of course, wanted to be a wordsmith, just like him and Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot and Billy Collins, after him. 'Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening', 'Acquainted with the Night', 'Mending Wall' were Frost poems I had once learned by heart - I loved them so much!
I will end this comment by dedicating 'Nothing Gold Can Stay', to you, in honor of your beautiful post, today, which describes the regrowth of 'spring' green from autumn/winter's gold, and alludes to the garden of Eden, to do so.
Happy Monday, Dewena.
Poppy
NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY
By Robert Frost
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.
What a beautiful comment, Poppy! I'm glad you're able to be planting your favorite blooms now and I'm sure the veggie garden is already started. I haven't watched Jonna's latest vlog yet but do love watching them. If anyone happens to read your comment who hasn't met her yet on YouTube, you have a treat in store for you. Thank you for the beautiful Frost poem! I had to memorize some of them too, at Dan Mills Elementary! Do school children still memorize poetry, I wonder? Or has it gone the way "old math" went?
DeleteI'm so happy that I stopped back by again. I always love people's experiences and joy in the area where they live.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to check on Jonna. her life just enchants me. I don't think I would enjoy actually LIVING it but it's like visiting in another world!
and yes! I think 'it' has gone the way of old math for sure Dewena!
even nursery rhymes! I used to know them all when I was little. you hardly ever hear any child recite them now! times they be a changin'! xoxo
Wonderful post today. Plus excellent comments and some great poetry. Thank you all.
ReplyDelete