Linsey-Woolsey Winter, Dogwood Winter, Redbud Winter or Blackberry Winter: All of these are names for spring cold snaps based on what might be in bloom when the weather turns cold. The first is an exception, the old fashioned name for long-johns. I imagine so called because you had to pull them out of the chest and put them back on when the weather turned cold in spring. Cold snaps are on the mind with the current extended spell entering another week. Not unexpected at this time of year but they leave one yearning for warmer days.
Last year at this time the spring honey flow was in high gear, so high that we had our first swarm on March 27th. So this weekend Cindy repaired and replaced foundations in the hive frames. Late yesterday I got into our four hives and added new supers and frames. Even with the current cold snap the bees were active. The plums and peaches are in bloom, as are the forsythia, spirea, flowering quince, maples and a host of other ornamentals. All of which makes me nervous with one eye on the skies and the other in my journal.
This weekend in 2011 I was putting down a favored sow, Snowflake, on a warm spring day after a failed farrowing that left her unable to stand and suffering. Late March 2010 Cindy and I were building a farrowing hut in a high wind so cold that it brought alternating waves of sleet, snow and cold rain slashing across us as we raced to complete the structure before a sow farrowed.
Looking back through the journals covering thirteen years of this one weekend and I am reminded of Mark Twain. As he said in the preface to one of his novels, “there is a 100% chance of weather in this book”. But sometimes instead of weather I find a bit of snobbery has crept in to those pages. Back around 2006 this entry on the last weekend in March on a BBQ dinner we hosted regarding the now ex-husband of a friend. “….he is such a dreadful bore that he is best tolerated in a larger crowd”. Well at least the weather must have been pleasant.
But hovering over all of these late March entries is the year 2007. April 8th we had a severe cold snap with a low of 19 degrees; so cold that the hardwoods did not leaf out again until late May. It was a stunning loss of greenery in one night. Our woods had leafed out with that bright green of spring color and the next week they were the brown of early winter.
The nurseries and garden centers loved that year. Everyone lulled into plantings based on an early warm spring had to rush out and replenish all that had been lost. Almost 100% of the Tennessee apple crop was lost. Many orchards had to buy apples from Washington state to meet contracts with area grocery stores.
Who knows what this spring will bring. Tomorrow the forecast is for snow showers.
