Spring
19/03/24 00:57
According to the Farmer’s Almanac, the vernal equinox, the official start date for the season of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, is today at 8:06 pm (Pacific Daylight Time). The Eve of Spring was a poetry prompt at our poetry group last night. Each of us was allowed four minutes to write a poem on the topic. Here is what I came up with:
On the Eve of Spring
Spring’s eve might be spring
Might be summer
Might be winter
Spring’s eve might mean planting
Might mean kite flying
Might mean snow shoveling
Spring’s eve might bring raindrops
Might bring windchill
Might bring sunshine
Good thing for calendars
So I know that today is
Spring’s eve!
Most of the poems of our group made note of the fickle nature of Spring. I took a few minutes to tell the group of Northwesterners about spring blizzards in South Dakota where we saw significant snow as late as Mother’s Day in our 25 years there. Snow wasn’t in our forecast here yesterday. The high temperature was nearly 60 degrees with bright sunshine. We’ve had a week of sunny days now and yesterday we had time to get out into the yard and do some planting. I put in some huckleberry and elderberry plants in the back yard and we planted lavender and heather in the front along with a few herbs in our herb garden. We picked up the plants at the county native plant sale on Saturday and it was time to get them into the ground. We haven’t planted our seed crops yet and our dahlia tubers are still packed away in the garage, so I’ve still got some planting left. We like to plant lettuce in groups so that we get a longer harvest. The peas can go into their place by a trellis where they flourished last year. And the flowering bedding plants and tomatoes have not yet come from the master gardener from whom we’ve been purchasing them for the past few years. There is plenty of work in the garden coming in the next few weeks.
And, surprisingly to me since I have not yet adjusted to our new climate even after four years, the lawn needs to be mowed and trimmed. Our lawn here is very small compared with the lawn we had in South Dakota. I can mow and trim in less than a half hour here compared with the two hour job I used to have. On the other hand, lawn mowing season is much longer here, so I get to do it a lot more times each year. Our lawn remained green throughout the winter with only an occasional dusting of snow. We did get one storm that dumped enough to require serious shoveling this winter and it came with enough wind to leave some significant, nearly South Dakota sized, drifts.
The date of the average end of frost arrived last week on the Ides of March. Of course averages don’t give you the precise date for any given year. I still remember and tell the story of the spring of 1981, when we lived in North Dakota and spring fever got the best of me so that I planted two sets of tomatoes that both were killed by frost before finally succeeding with the third set of plants I put out that year.
The task of gardening, however, is much easier here than in the Dakotas. Where we lived in North Dakota was plant hardiness zone 3b. That means that the low temperature was -35 to -30, which is pretty cold. Hardiness zone spans from the coastal areas of Alaska, the southern regions of Canada and northernmost US states to northern Europe, northern interior China. Rapid City, South Dakota, where we lived for 25 years, is Zone 5a (minimum temperatures -20 to -15). We thought we’d moved to quite bit warmer place when we got there, though we spent a decade in Boise, Idaho (hardiness Zone 6b; -5 to 0). But none of those places compare to our current home in Blaine which is hardiness zone 8b (15 to 20 degrees). Of course that means that houses are not as well insulated and we’ve had more issues with cold weather and plumbing here than we had in our Dakota homes. The first winter we lived in our current home, we had a pipe in our uninsulated garage freeze and burst. I was so amazed that they ran uninsulated pipes on an outside wall in an unheated and uninsulated garage that it caught me off guard. I’ve learned to drain that pipe in the winter and have avoided the problem since.
So spring officially arrives today and what that means is different depending on where you live. However, no matter where you live, spring weather is fickle. Even if winters and summers are predictably cold and warm, spring and fall are seasons of variable weather. The variety makes for interesting and I think fun times. I enjoy being surprised by the weather. I also enjoy not having to have my parka along when I head out. A sweatshirt in my pickup is enough for many days around here, and I didn’t need any jacket at all when I was working digging in the yard yesterday. If it seems a bit warm, which really doesn’t happen until summer around here, we can always walk a few minutes to the beach to enjoy a refreshing sea breeze. The prevailing wind is onshore, so it is always cooler on the beach that it is up the hill at our house.
Even in places where winter persists for months yet, there is enough change in the air at the beginning of spring to give the folks hope and get them to thinking about warmer weather and more outdoor activities. It may not quite be time to put out all of the plants around here yet, but it is close enough to get us to thinking and planning for summer gardening.
May spring bring you joy regardless of the weather.
On the Eve of Spring
Spring’s eve might be spring
Might be summer
Might be winter
Spring’s eve might mean planting
Might mean kite flying
Might mean snow shoveling
Spring’s eve might bring raindrops
Might bring windchill
Might bring sunshine
Good thing for calendars
So I know that today is
Spring’s eve!
Most of the poems of our group made note of the fickle nature of Spring. I took a few minutes to tell the group of Northwesterners about spring blizzards in South Dakota where we saw significant snow as late as Mother’s Day in our 25 years there. Snow wasn’t in our forecast here yesterday. The high temperature was nearly 60 degrees with bright sunshine. We’ve had a week of sunny days now and yesterday we had time to get out into the yard and do some planting. I put in some huckleberry and elderberry plants in the back yard and we planted lavender and heather in the front along with a few herbs in our herb garden. We picked up the plants at the county native plant sale on Saturday and it was time to get them into the ground. We haven’t planted our seed crops yet and our dahlia tubers are still packed away in the garage, so I’ve still got some planting left. We like to plant lettuce in groups so that we get a longer harvest. The peas can go into their place by a trellis where they flourished last year. And the flowering bedding plants and tomatoes have not yet come from the master gardener from whom we’ve been purchasing them for the past few years. There is plenty of work in the garden coming in the next few weeks.
And, surprisingly to me since I have not yet adjusted to our new climate even after four years, the lawn needs to be mowed and trimmed. Our lawn here is very small compared with the lawn we had in South Dakota. I can mow and trim in less than a half hour here compared with the two hour job I used to have. On the other hand, lawn mowing season is much longer here, so I get to do it a lot more times each year. Our lawn remained green throughout the winter with only an occasional dusting of snow. We did get one storm that dumped enough to require serious shoveling this winter and it came with enough wind to leave some significant, nearly South Dakota sized, drifts.
The date of the average end of frost arrived last week on the Ides of March. Of course averages don’t give you the precise date for any given year. I still remember and tell the story of the spring of 1981, when we lived in North Dakota and spring fever got the best of me so that I planted two sets of tomatoes that both were killed by frost before finally succeeding with the third set of plants I put out that year.
The task of gardening, however, is much easier here than in the Dakotas. Where we lived in North Dakota was plant hardiness zone 3b. That means that the low temperature was -35 to -30, which is pretty cold. Hardiness zone spans from the coastal areas of Alaska, the southern regions of Canada and northernmost US states to northern Europe, northern interior China. Rapid City, South Dakota, where we lived for 25 years, is Zone 5a (minimum temperatures -20 to -15). We thought we’d moved to quite bit warmer place when we got there, though we spent a decade in Boise, Idaho (hardiness Zone 6b; -5 to 0). But none of those places compare to our current home in Blaine which is hardiness zone 8b (15 to 20 degrees). Of course that means that houses are not as well insulated and we’ve had more issues with cold weather and plumbing here than we had in our Dakota homes. The first winter we lived in our current home, we had a pipe in our uninsulated garage freeze and burst. I was so amazed that they ran uninsulated pipes on an outside wall in an unheated and uninsulated garage that it caught me off guard. I’ve learned to drain that pipe in the winter and have avoided the problem since.
So spring officially arrives today and what that means is different depending on where you live. However, no matter where you live, spring weather is fickle. Even if winters and summers are predictably cold and warm, spring and fall are seasons of variable weather. The variety makes for interesting and I think fun times. I enjoy being surprised by the weather. I also enjoy not having to have my parka along when I head out. A sweatshirt in my pickup is enough for many days around here, and I didn’t need any jacket at all when I was working digging in the yard yesterday. If it seems a bit warm, which really doesn’t happen until summer around here, we can always walk a few minutes to the beach to enjoy a refreshing sea breeze. The prevailing wind is onshore, so it is always cooler on the beach that it is up the hill at our house.
Even in places where winter persists for months yet, there is enough change in the air at the beginning of spring to give the folks hope and get them to thinking about warmer weather and more outdoor activities. It may not quite be time to put out all of the plants around here yet, but it is close enough to get us to thinking and planning for summer gardening.
May spring bring you joy regardless of the weather.
