When the National Weather Service issued the freeze warning for early this morning, I just about cried. My big garden, it seems, is just really getting going, my raspberries are loaded with an outstanding fall crop, my fall vegetable plantings are coming along beautifully, and I just planted new flowers in the window boxes. Between bemoaning Mother Nature's unfairness (um, do you remember the winter and spring we had?) and hoping for a meteorological miracle, I started rounding up sheets, blankets, sleeping bags, tarps, and old towels. Yes, I know that we choose to live in Minnesota where 60+ degree temperature swings are not unprecedented (it was 90 just a couple of days ago), but give a girl a break! This has not exactly been the easiest growing season.
When it was all said and done, it took 15 blankets plus a few towels to cover everything in both vegetable gardens, two huge tarps to cover the raspberries, and a few more towels to make sure the window boxes were protected (even though mums are pretty hardy little plants, I wasn't taking any chances!). And of course, even with all of this done before sunset, I still ended up outside at 10 p.m. with a flashlight repositioning a few covers that had blown off before the wind died down.
Dedication? More like pure stubborn determination. With as much work as the yard and garden have been this summer (and again, I'll bring up the long winter and non-existent spring we had), I am not heading towards winter without a fight!
As of a quarter to six when Mike and I left for work, it was somewhere between 38 and 40 degrees (according to our car and the internet, respectively) and it was expected to drop another couple degrees or so before starting to warm up. It would appear that we dodged the bullet, but we'll find out for sure when I get home this afternoon.
Labels: garden, seasons