Posted by
William D. Dannenmaier on Saturday, March 15, 2008 12:10:32 PM
It’s the Worry Season
By
William D. Dannenmaier
It is March 15th, the beginning of the worry season. Every morning, every night, I must watch the news, not the ersatz news on national television about the sorry sluts parading as Hollywood stars, the real news, the important news, “what will the temperature be in the morning?”
Here in middle Tennessee my peach trees are budding, eager as teenaged boys on their first dates, lusting to burst into bloom. The pear buds are not far behind. But it is too early, the likelihood of a killing frost is too high, although each day, as I watch the liars who parade as weather forecasters and contrast their mistakes with the thermometer on the porch, I worry about the possibility of warm days which will encourage those stupid peaches and pears to blossom. Then, as the idiots blossom, I worry that a late frost will kill my fruit for the year. Will I again have to cover growing vegetables with my bride’s sheets in the hope of helping them survive?
To date, things aren’t bad. My worrying and watching have paid a dividend. We have arrived at the middle of March with nothing of importance, nothing I care to eat, in bloom. Things appear to be on schedule. My peach trees, in years in which I get peaches, bloom about the third week of March and the pears burst into full bloom during the annual writers’ conference I formerly attended in Knoxville – when I should have been home spraying those blossoms for fire blight. In those years, there has always been danger of that late frost, but I’ve usually gotten fruit. Now, if only coldish, not cold, coldish, weather will stay for a week or two those blooms might be delayed. Every day counts. Each day before they bloom, beginning now, is one less day until the last expected date of a killing frost. Weather forecasters, lie; nature doesn’t obey my wants; I can only wait, watch and worry.
Last year was horrible. Had we been living in rural Tennessee a hundred years ago with such weather, we would have starved through the winter, as too many of our wildlife creatures did. There were unseasonably warm weeks in February and early March, followed by unseasonable freezes in late March and early April. Those late freezes were nicely spaced. The early ones killed all the fruit, the late one killed all the nuts. Not only were there no hazelnuts and pecans, there were no acorns.
Anyway, it’s the worry season. Who cares if the next President is an elderly man whose chief claim to fame is having survived a prisoner of war camp or a woman famed for manipulation and corruption or a black man whose idea of change is to increase the benefits of illegal aliens and welfare plantation slaves? I’m worried about real things. Will I be able to pick fresh fruit from my trees and enjoy fresh vegetables or will I have to buy the stuff in grocery stores imported from the Mexican state of California?