Saturday, March 23rd was my birthday. I now have 48 trips around the sun logged in. There ought to be frequent flyer miles!! It was a pretty uneventful day as I’m trying to get over a nasty sinus infection. Still, I couldn’t help but go outdoors and enjoy the bright sunshine and 50° temps. A perfect early spring day, right? Who knows anymore. The weather forecasters are predicting heavy snow fall in the next 24 hours. Since all storms need nomenclature these days, the media has bestowed “The Palm Sunday Blizzard” on it.
It’s so gorgeous today. A blizzard tomorrow. Really?
As a gardener and employee of a nursery and landscape company, I always have an eye on the weather. I don’t remember being like this (kind of obsessed) until firmly planting my gardening stalk into the ground and my roots taking hold. As a child, my interest was limited to the possibility of a school snow day (far and few) or rain to get out of farm work. That was a big deal. Today, I’m not so sure why I follow it so closely. Must be a combination of several things: how to dress, how it affects my garden, how it will affect business, and so on.
After my 1965 birth date, my mother brought me home from the hospital just before Palm Sunday. I guess you used to stay in the hospital after birth much longer than you do today. I hadn’t been home long when Indiana experienced its worst tornado outbreak. There’s even a Wikipedia page about this. All my life I’ve heard stories about how my family rode out the storm– even saw one of the major tornados tear across the county from the upstairs window. What a sight that must have been- power out and the ghostly eerie image of the tornado gliding across the landscape visible only against the sky’s random electrical charges or lightning bolts shooting directly into the vicious funnel. Although the path was miles from the house, my brothers and sisters said they missed several days of school because it was ‘all hands on deck’ for cleanup.
Picture of the “double tornado” that hit the Midway Trailer Park in Indiana, killing 14.
Fast forward 48 years and here I am again, at the center of another Palm Sunday storm. This one promises snow and high winds sans the spinning funnels. What will the emerging peonies think? Yes, I worry about stuff like that.
My question to you is this: What is your relationship with the weather, and do you think gardening has influenced that relationship? Love to hear your answers in the comment section below.
Now a little plug for a friend.
Opera is not for everybody. That’s just a fact. But when a local friend of mine sent me the press release for the Indianapolis Opera Ball titled Divinely Dutch: Celebrating the Art & Beauty of the Netherlands, I was pleasantly surprised to learn of the visual aesthetic tie to their upcoming opera, The Flying Dutchman.
My friend Jamie Gibbs is a horticulturist and landscape architect. It comes as no surprise that he would co-chair this event and put a botanical twist on it. “Where possible the decorations for the glamorous setting will be recyclable live plants and biodegradable materials in honor of earth day. Thousands of potted Dutch Tulips will grace the dining tables and silent auction areas. These tulips will be planted on the grounds of the Basile Opera Center after the ball. Other “green” components will include reusable backdrops, LED lighting effects and projected images rather than constructing décor only to be discarded. The innovative approach to charity ball decorations is a departure from the often wasteful, and expensive, one-time décor common on such events.”
Sounds like a pretty inspiring Black Tie event, but more importantly an environmentally responsible one. To learn more, Click Here.
Weather Update: It just started snowing. Kinda hard. :/
