Winter refuses to relax its grip
It may be spring, but warm days are scarce and so is time in the garden
We woke up this morning to a major snow squall. Not that it amounted to much, but for a good 45 minutes or so it looked like a blizzard out the window. It accompanied a dip in the temperature outdoors, which had fallen overnight to about 31 degrees at 7 a.m. and settled in at 32 by midday.
This has been the pattern this spring, a day or two of almost tolerable weather followed by a day or two that take us back to March or late February. It’s predicted to continue into next week.
New Englanders like to say if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute, a phrase that may trace its origins to Mark Twain, though that’s a subject of debate. Although others have attributed it to Twain over the years, researchers have not found it in his writings or public remarks. Twain did tell those attending the annual dinner of the New England Society of New York in 1876: ”In the spring I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside four and twenty hours.”
That seems about right.
I first was told to just wait a minute in New Hampshire many, many years ago. While it remains as quaint as ever, it strikes the gardener in me more deeply than it did back then, when battling the elements mostly involved crossing campus for a class.
I’m not alone. The refusal of winter to relax its grip is a great conversation starter, especially among those of us eager to get outdoors and start planting. It goes kind of like this.
“Do you believe this weather!?”
“Crazy, right? It’s freezing out.”
“Have you started your seeds yet?”
“Yeah. You?”
The thing is, I’m no longer surprised by the late arrival of spring in the Berkshires. Not like I was last year, when I contrasted gardening here in the 5a with my former planting ground outside Washington, D.C. I know we’re about one month behind the mid-Atlantic.
Still, it’s fun to commiserate with those who like me are tiring of checking the progress of their seedlings sprouting under grow lights and just want to get their hands in the dirt.
Ben Noll, a meteorologist who now writes for the Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang, also keeps tabs on meteorological goings on in the Hudson Valley on his Substack, BenNollWeather. The Hudson Valley is just a stone’s throw across the border from us and basically shares the same weather as we do. (A shout out here to longtime friend Nancy Bobrowitz, a loyal reader who told me about Ben’s newsletter.)
Anyway Ben wrote about a website that has redefined the seasons in New York State, only partially tongue in cheek, creating 12 when there once were four. Here they are:
I think it’s funny and it carries a healthy dollop of truth. This is indeed the “Spring of Deception” period.
I moved a couple flats of young vegetables and flowers from the comfort of the lights in the basement to the patio out back the other day to begin the process of hardening them off for planting out someday soon. There wasn’t much sun, but even natural daylight in cloud cover is stronger than an LED. Plus there was a breeze, which helps toughen and strengthen the stems.
They spent a day and a night outdoors. Then we had the threat of a freeze, so I carried them indoors and put them on the kitchen counter. Yesterday I carried them out again. Last night I brought them back in. There was snow in the forecast, which rang true early this morning. They’ve been on the kitchen table all day because it’s cold breezy outside.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll get them back out. This is how things go in mid-April. As Ben Noll wrote at the start of the week, the “weather doesn’t get high marks” at the moment.
“Looking ahead to the week of April 14,” he continued, “signs are that cool and warm conditions will probably alternate, giving the weather an extra changeable theme in the middle part of the month.”
I could have told you that.
Here’s a selection of other recent posts:
Welcoming the elusive bluebird
32 degrees here this morning, so we’re not much better off!