Doin' the Continental

A humid continental climate (Köppen prefix D and a third letter of a or b) is a climatic region defined by Russo-German climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1900, which is typified by large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers and cold (sometimes severely cold) winters.

Where was spring?  Where were the days we rolled up our tshirt sleeves in April to begin working on our farmers’ tans? Each morning I’d don a short sleeve tee in hopeless optimism….then a long sleeve tee...and a pullover fleece.  The aborigines have their three dog nights, but we marked the April calendar with X after X of three shirt days. Most springs, the first optimistic tomato customer will call soon after April Fool's (coincidence, no doubt), but even the most Pollyanna-ish gardener will save their ammo when the morning low is 19 degrees.  Snow? Unpleasant and messy, but not unheard of. Frost in May: economically damaging and a monkey wrench in any delivery schedule. But NINETEEN DEGREES? “Always winter and never Christmas”, C.S. Lewis would say.

Continental Climate

noun. a climate characterized by hot summers, cold winters, and little rainfall, typical of the interior of a continent. Collins English Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers.

It snowed. It snowed Palm Sunday. Well, that can happen: we noted, with bravado, that March was just going out like a lion. It snowed again, the next weekend, while we were purportedly hosting our annual Open House. Nary a customer braved the roads, but Mark and Laura and Grandma Millie and Grandpa Charlie came to drink lemonade (!) and eat cookies for the kids’ sakes. ‘Cause nothing can really warm you like a cold glass of lemonade.

The next weekend it got serious. Though most of our customers told us to hold their plants until it warmed, some sales have no “rain date”. Necessity being the mother of inventions, we improvised, leaving the tender veggies in the heated houses overnight and swathing every cart in shrink wrap to keep the warmth and moisture from dissipating.  An electric heater kept the semi and the Isuzu above freezing several nights. The gaps in the trailers were even sealed with duct tape so the windchill couldn’t sneak in. The first morning the temperature was above forty degrees, we almost broke out the t-shirts.

Lower 48 States Just Had the Warmest May on Record | The Weather ...

https://weather.com/.../2018-06-06-may-2018-record-hot-temperatures-united-states-n...

Jun 6, 2018 - May 2018 was the hottest of any May in 124 years of recording keeping for the continental United States, eclipsing the extreme heat of that ..

With a flip of the calendar page, frozen April morphed into blistering May. It was so hot, water from a hose  blanched flowers in an instant. It was so hot, hostas bleached and the daffodils that had waited patiently through the freezes around Easter sighed and bowed out for the season.  The wind was a scirocco, sucking the moisture from foliage, flower, and soil. A common refrain was, “Well, I won’t have to mow again!”

One of the few crops that shrugged its shoulders at this schizophrenic weather was the hardy hibiscus.  The hoodlum autumn glory clematis perished in wholesale quantities in my yard, surviving only in the canopy of a century old lilac; the lackadaisical butterfly bushes fainted dead away...literally….but for one pair of leaves I’m fostering like a spark in the darkness. And while the so called “hardy” grasses never broke “dormancy”, leaving behind a thicket of rapier sharp blades for the unlucky gardener to penetrate and dispose of, the hibiscus ignored, as is their wont, the entire frigid calendar page of April, and then, sensing the blaze of May, stretched underground,  and shot to the surface to take a look around.

Now it’s July and the hibiscus are nodding their giant heads in approval over this hot state of affairs.  And so are their potted friends, lined out in rows of ruby and green down by the sweet corn patch. Some of them are blooming: the vibrant Midnight Marvel and silvery Mocha Moon, each blossom lasting but a day.  From cuttings to a three gallon pot is a mere six weeks; but even if you can’t SEE the hibiscus growing, you could certainly MEASURE it day by day….By the end of the summer, the roots are as thick as your fingers and anchored so deeply in the soil beneath the ground cloth that they must be cut with pruners.  But don’t wait that long: plant these voracious growers now while they can still be unpotted without trauma to either plant or gardener and enjoy their flower power for the rest of summer, however hot, wet, dry, or...continental….. it may be…

As for me, it’s off to sleep before another July morning of watering lines of asters and mums, praying for cooler evenings for them to set buds…then an afternoon loading hibiscus, the flower that says….Let’s DO the Continental!
 

Skating Tricks, Licorice Sticks and Other Feats

Old Comiskey, Harry Caray, Jimmy Piersall

I had a dream....

Crinoid stems in limestone

Brachiopod fossil 

I had several dreams, actually.  Ones that I admitted to all the world when I filled out an interest survey in the library of the Orland Junior High.  Of course, I don't know what occupations the other boys and girls signed up for after browsing through the various options. The cards were quite pragmatic about the job prospects for each career.  Because I loved collecting rocks and fossils, walking along stream beds and hiking trails with my head down, I thought being a geologist would be interesting.  The career card was quite frank about the prospects, cautioning me that I was unlikely to get paid for being a rock hound; most geologists worked for petroleum companies after taking lots of science and math.

My other aspiration was even more quixotic:  I wanted to be a baseball announcer.  I had spent my entire life listening to Jack Buck and Harry Caray...even Jack Brickhouse!   I could just see myself taking a seat up in the booth, donning a headset and marking up my scorebook while sending the play by play over the airwaves to fans all over the Midwest.

Alas, I could find no card in the library with the prerequisites for becoming a baseball announcer...

The arrowheads and brachiopods and crinoid stems stayed in their shoeboxes...as did the baseball cards.

Even though Laura and I both had tricycles when we were little, the next step up from three wheels  was not a bicycle, but roller skates. Our house was on a corner lot, so a girl could get a little wind through her hair sweeping around the curve.  Steel wheeled skates like "I've got a brand new pair of roller skates"  didn't have a long life span; the wheels picked up little bits of gravel, pitching the skater onto her knees, and eventually, the bearings would spread and the bb's inside would spill out onto the sidewalk.  What a joy it was to go a skating rink where the wooden wheels glided across the floor!  I learned to skate backwards and even crossover going around the rink.  I may not have been going that fast, but the rumbling of the wheels made me feel like a freight train under a head of steam.

Of course,  I was an utter failure at other athletic endeavors; I could run, but could never master a cartwheel, ruining any chance of being a cheerleader, though I jumped and yelled at recess with all the other little girls.  I flung myself into the air from the mini-trampoline...only to land flat on my back attempting a front flip, losing my breath and walking on tenterhooks for weeks afterwards.

I did write lots of stories, even a book(!)..of sorts...titled Time Machine Travels featuring my two best friends at the time...and me.  Funny thing is I don't even remember which time travel book provided the idea, but I do know that my grandmother's writing was the inspiration.  All those little newsprint note pads covered with 10 year old cursive!  I scribbled on all kinds of scrap paper, numbering every sheet to measure my accomplishment.

Thanks to my father's perseverance, I finally took on a project for life when I stuck a reed in my mouth and learned to assemble the Normandy clarinet he bought for me.  Music, as my father said once, has no evolutionary reason for existing: man can and does live and work without it.  'Why Beethoven', he would ask the air, 'If not for God?'  Certainly the angels plugged their ears for years as I learned the physical mechanisms for making sounds from my licorice stick, but the associated benefits..perseverance, routine, patience, sacrifice...are not limited to the world of music.  Listening to music makes the world richer, but playing an instrument ties you to past, present and future. I first buzzed a reed more than a half century ago...and still do....happily if not perfectly....

Lord knows I can't turn a cartwheel!

And If Not, He is Still Good

I have been known to kick the trash can, slam the door, hurt my toe, and scream 'why me'.  I'm not proud of it. I know good and well these dramatics are unproductive and even silly, especially since this kind of outburst is provoked not by real pain, real trouble, or real distress, but by short term frustration.

Real heartache does not make me shake my fist at the heavens.  Real heartache, wherever and whatever it may be, makes me pray. Then, I am reminded to be thankful for every good thing I take for granted.....filling two cups of coffee at breakfast, comfortable shoes, beautiful music on the radio, challenging work with people I love.  When the tribulations of life come around, I recognize my limitations, taking to heart the Scripture that assures us our entreaties are heard even when they are wordless.


"When we don't know what to pray for..."  My memory is chock full of times when prayers were answered...prayers for healing, for rescue, for happiness, for safety, for good news, but when my father had a stroke and my parents' world was upended, I could not find the words to pray.  We were always winging it, always trying to solve yesterday's problems, trying to wrest contentment and compassion from chaos.  Health and happiness faded as spring bloomed.

But even as we grieved, God's merciful hand was easy to see.  With gratitude we remembered the times we had gathered to celebrate at Redbarn.  The hard choices to uproot them, to buy a house, that seemed so fruitless, upon reflection, turned to blessings as their loving family and our caring community showed patience and compassion and the best of human kindness.  Until the very end of their trip from this world to the next, my mom and dad were together.... as they always had been.  A final gift to them from their loving Father....and a comfort for all of us saying goodbye.

Hard times call for trust. Faith trusts in the story.  And whether or not we understand the story, we are called to believe it.  We will see it clearly someday.

And if not, it is still good.

Common Ground

When the girls were little, they colored and painted, drew pictures and dressed up, and played with dollhouses and Barbie dolls.  Their bedroom was sometimes a playground, sometimes a city, sometimes a garden for toys they made themselves.  It was always untidy.

With such a large group of good and loyal friends, it is no surprise that Laura and Mark have been auntie and uncle par excellence. Elementary basketball and volleyball games in the friendly confines of small school gymnasiums, pints and half pints baseball in towns without Starbucks,  outings to the Zoo, the Arch, the Science Center, even the tippy top of the City Museum in St. Louis.   Pernod Gardens is a home away from home with surf 'n turf from Chef Mark...especially for college freshmen. We celebrate whatever the occasion: Farm Bureau Nights at the Ballpark with Kosher brats, New Year's Eves with party poppers and silly hats,  July 4ths with epic fireworks, golf for fun and good causes...

 One of us is a country mouse and one a city mouse, but though we live a state apart, we have many shared loves.  Laura was the very first transplanter at Hurst Greenery years and years ago, and it's still a great pleasure to task Mark with packing posies in the back of their car for a summer's sojourn in St. Louis.  We commiserate when the weather is dry..or hot...cold or windy...we celebrate the beauties of orchids, daylilies, pansies, and hibiscus. Pottery from across the country graces the tables and shelves of our homes; magnets from far and wide decorate the doors of our refrigerators.  Each of us keeps a stack of books close at hand in various states of read and hope to read. And both of us carry the story of our lives in photographs: from Instamatics to iPhones, from big hair to big hats, babies to grandbabies,  weddings and reunions, graduations and good-byes. 

These are the ties that bind through the years, that weave a family history across the miles, and make sisters friends.....