A Spring Proposal

It is Spring, correct?   Because ProfessorRoush is having a difficult time this morning discerning a difference from the Winter he experienced just a few days ago.  On this, the fourth day past the Spring equinox of 2013, it is currently 27°F in Manhattan, Kansas and the wind is out of due North at 15mph with gusts up to 22mph.  We have, as of last count, 4.6 inches estimated new snow on the ground since 7:00 p.m. yesterday.

Enough for statistics.  Mark Twain, once said there "are three kinds of lies, lies, damn lies, and statistics."  Well, at least most scholars attribute it to Mark Twain; Twain, himself, claimed to be quoting Benjamin Disraeli but the statement cannot be found in Disraeli's private or published works.  So the authorship of this quote may be as misleading as are statistics themselves.  And anyway, Mark Twain was just a pen name for Samuel Clements; why do we attribute quotes to Mark Twain instead of Samuel Clements? Anyone?

Enough for both Mark Twain and statistics.  What the statistics of the daily weather hide is that, as you can plainly see, my little "sun face" on the garage wall looks a little blue at the moment.   And that, as you can see in the picture below, part of the ground in my garden is almost clear and other parts have drifts over a foot tall.  And that, if I take a step outside the door to pick up the Sunday morning paper, I'm liable to freeze solid in my boots.  Of course it would be a minor miracle that the Sunday morning paper has even been delivered.  I always scoff at television meteorologists who stress "wind chill" data to scare their viewers, but the wind chill for me outside right now is in the 10°F range.  The real joke is on me this morning. because I moved my "new" tractor up to the garage in preparation to clear snow this morning.  I'm convinced, however, that if I sit on it and drive it outside right now, the next time my carcass will be discovered is in 10,000 years when some scientist cores into the glacier now forming on my driveway pad.

And enough, by the way, of whining by the global warming crowd.  Take notice, I'm not going to listen to any such decrepit creatures for a few days, and maybe not until August.  I've been suspicious of their sincerity ever since they started talking about "climate change" instead of "global warming" anyway.  It is pretty tough to convince me that we're in the midst of global warming when this year's real Spring is over a month behind last year, whatever the calendar may say. I propose here and now that we do away with calendars and equinoxes and go back to "Earth-centric" time.  Copernicus was a heretic and a lawyer and his opinions should have been more suspect even in his own time.  How about if all gardening folk agree that it's not Spring until the daffodils bloom, wherever you are?  Heck, we have time zones whose strict interpretations are enforced by our Federal government, why not "Spring Zones"?  They'd just run north and south instead of east to west, so that's no big deal, especially to those gardeners who never know what direction they're facing and plant sunflowers on the north sides of their houses.  And for those of you who live in USDA Zones so hot that daffodils don't thrive, who cares when Spring is for you?  It's always just Spring or Summer for you.  You can say that it's Spring when you can't fry an egg on the sidewalk and Summer when you can.  Here in the Flint Hills, ProfessorRoush is not celebrating Spring until he sees a yellow daffodil in his garden!   Which is evidently going to be awhile yet.

Spring Resolutions

Fellow Gardeners, let us forget about New Year's Resolutions, loud and irritating fireworks on New Year's Eve, and the whole false pretense of getting soused off of your feet for an excuse to neck with the neighbor's wife (not that I've ever practiced any of the above, particularly, the latter due to obvious inherent dangers to my appendages from the missus).  I propose a revolution or at least a re-evolution of our gardening lives based on a return to the natural cycles of our seasons.

Spring Equinox, March 20, 2011, Flint Hills

I feel it is evident that we should recognize that the new year does not begin for Midwestern gardeners on January 1st, it begins instead with the Spring Equinox on March 20 or 21st.  Humbug(!) on the forced celebrations and the bone-chilling cold of December 31st, and January 1st.  To a four-seasons gardener, those days and the three months following are merely the drabbest, grayest days of the year; the low of our gardening experiences when we are forced to force bulbs and branches into unnatural bloom to feebly claim that we've extended our gardening season.  Our real gardening year begins with the Vernal Equinox, the equality of night and day for the planet.  It continues as the flowering of our gardens peaks with the Summer Solstice, and then we wind down our year with only a few plants blooming after the Autumnal Equinox.  Winter is merely that interminable period between the last Fall flower and the first bloom of Spring.

I was struck, yesterday, at the Equinox, that here in this mid-continental Eden of the Kansas Flint Hills, the gardening season really does begin with the Spring Equinox.  Only a few different flowers have bloomed this year in my garden before March 20th; the over-achieving and uninspiring Witch Hazels a few weeks ago, a few stray snow crocus a couple of weeks back, and then finally my Dutch Crocus and Siberian Iris, jumping the gun by only a couple of days.  But yesterday, exactly on the Equinox, the first Forsythia and the first Daffodil opened in my garden, these true Spring flowers confirming that Spring has indeed arrived in the Flint Hills.    

The Ancients knew better about such things. Zoroastrianism, one of the world's oldest organized religions,  uses a calendar with the first day of the new year coinciding with the vernal equinox. The concept of Oestara (light and dark balanced with light gaining power) was named for Eostre, a Teutonic goddess of spring and new life (who also lent her name to the English word "Easter"). Many of the older Teutonic rituals for Eostre involved eggs, rabbits, and pastel colors, nature walks and the act of seed-planting, similar to our modern Easter rituals.   It is only right that the celebrations of a new year should be related with the stirrings of green life, and not emphasized by the clamor of fireworks, but by the quiet call of the Meadowlark.  Pagan rites of sowing seed and the symbolic sacrifice of a few virgins (always a decent addition to a drunken celebration) should be reinstituted and balanced by the Fall rites of Harvest and Thanksgiving.

The metamorphosis begins now!  I propose that our yearly resolutions, those annual statements of good intent and purposeful existence, be made at the Spring Equinox.  Last night, sitting in the gazebo after moving a few roses and trimming back the damaged boxwoods, I made the following promises for my gardening year:

1.  I resolve, this year, to spend at least as much time sitting and listening to the life of my garden as I do imposing my will on it.  The specific action plan will be to sit down at least at the end of each working chore to enjoy the quiet of a job well-done.
2.  I resolve to allow more self-seeding by annuals, letting their natural wisdom choose the sites where they can flourish best.  Action:  designate a bed of bare, disturbed ground without mulch or extra water and simply weed out the weeds.
3.  I resolve to spend less time pushing the envelopes of Hardiness Zone and individual plant water requirements with new introductions and to grow more of those plants that are "Zone-Worthy" by their obvious delight in this climate.
4.  I will make specific plantings to attract and support avian wildlife to my garden and I will replenish and clean the hummingbird feeders at least every 3rd day.  Nowhere are God's miracles more evident than in the flight of a hummingbird or the glimpse of a bluebird.

So join with me, my gardening friends, on this first day of the Northern Hemisphere New Gardening Year, and add your resolutions to mine.  Rejoice ye, sow some seed, and sacrifice a few virgins in a drunken orgy if any can be found (I live, remember, in a College town).  In absence of the latter, at least share a little grape juice with a Significant Other beneath the stars of a new Spring.