Frost and Microclimates

I have two options for posting on a work day: post when I get home (as I am now) and risk having something that is rambling and incoherent - more so than usual - and may come to a sudden stop (kinda like the movie The Ten Commandments : "And so the Israelites wandered for forty years, and just when they got to the Promised Land, Moses died. The end. Thanks for watching.") Or sleep first and post in the afternoon, by which point a lot of my friends have probably posted stuff of their own that I'd rather be reading.

Either way I'm pressed for time, and can't really write a long-form post. So I need to call up something short that I want to say.

So, here:

We had frost this morning.

When you're a gardener, "last frost date" is a very important thing. Many plants will die if put out before then, and most seeds specify that they be started a given number of weeks before the last frost date. But last frost date isn't something you can just look up. Every house, every yard, every garden is in its own micro-climate with its own characteristics. When I used to walk Haley (who died in May 2005) in the morning in the Spring we would note the progression of flowering plants as we went along: Forsythia, Azalea, Rhododendron, Rose of Sharon. One thing I always noticed was that some plants in some areas around town would be open two weeks before our own versions of those plants. Something about this house's microclimate sets it two weeks later than places just two blocks to the West.

I will try to keep a close watch for the last incident of frost this Spring, for both this house and my house across town.

But just for the record:

We had frost this morning.