Fourteen Hours of Daylight

Today, those of us living in the Georgia Piedmont will begin to receive our fourteen hours of daylight, a sign of the impending summer season. This is my favorite season of the year. It's especially welcome because our drought here seems to be broken. I’m encouraged to work in the yard and garden once more, now that I don’t have to hand-water everything. So, now it’s the season to pull weeds. That’s done by hand also, of course. 

The little annuals -- the spring ephemeral weeds -- are easy to pull out of the soil. Like crop plants they put their efforts above ground; for them it’s produce foliage and then flower and seed, reproduce rapidly and get out. It’s the biennials and perennial weeds that build root systems; they plan to stick around. Try to get them while they are still little. It takes constant vigilance. 

And today comes Blackberry Winter, the last cold snap of the winter season. Along about mid-May here in the Piedmont, the last polar air mass of the year descends on us. Temperature this morning dropped into the low forties, according to my window thermometer. By tomorrow it should be closer to normal.

 Blackberries are in bloom now, as they should be. Do they need a little cold snap to set seeds? I wonder? 

We may yet have another little cold wave – Whippoorwill Winter, in the first part of June, when those birds return. Some years that snap is notable, too. 

But fourteen hours of sunlight looks good to me. 

Dac

5/18/2009. Happy birthday, Steve.

 

You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money – Abraham Lincoln.  (But did he tell Mrs. Lincoln?)

 

Comments

[Paige]

I now have two hummingbirds feeding outside my sunroom. Dac, you watch you back pulling up those weeds!!

[Irene]

Have had a lost whippoorwill behind my house for over a month. He sings all night and I wish he'd find a mate. Check out Spring comes to the Cumberland at http://www.pennhand.blogspot.com, where I discuss the "spring winters" and the responses.