Dogwood Winter

In Tennessee we have 5 Spring Winters:

Redbud winter in early April

Dogwood winter in mid to late April

Locust winter in early May

Blackberry winter in mid-May

Linsey-Woolsey Britches winter in late May

We've had Redbud winter already and the worst of Dogwood winter when we had three nights of freezing temps, one night down to 27 degrees.

We learned our lesson years ago and don't plant now until May 1st and even that can once in a blue moon be risky.

But all our trees and bushes, large or small, have some blackened tips where there was tender green growth. 

Our pretty little Japanese maple planted last fall, the fourth one RH has planted here, is no exception.

 

  That sweet little baby! How I hope she snaps back.

While the 10-day forecast doesn't predict more frost, it looks like we have another week of Dogwood Winter. And that's fine by me. We'll have to keep the heat on at night a little longer but no air conditioning in the daytime. And I have no doubt that summer, when it comes, will be long and hot so why long for it too soon.

Do you have these odd winters where you live? Is it summer one day and winter the next? Or do you typically stay deep in winter until Memorial Day? Our daughter in Montana had snow last June!

I've been reading the April 1951 issue of Ladies' Home Journal this week and they printed a few lines from Robert Frost's New Hampshire. It reminded me that I don't have any of his poetry books on my poetry shelf and made a note to order this famous collection. 

I never know exactly how to handle quotes from poetry--do you print them exactly how they are printed in a book or magazine?--but here they are, just like the Journal printed it, simply because after reading them I said to myself, "Isn't it God's truth!"

You know hot it is with an April day:

When the sun is out and the wind is still,

You're one month on in the middle of

         May.

But if you so much as dare to speak,

A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,

A wind comes off a frozen peak,

And you're two months back in the middle

         of March.

Robert Frost in New Hampshire