“It was like crammin’ a wet noodle up a wildcat’s nose. It just don’t work you know.” - Jerry Lee Lewis
“Despite the forecast, live like it’s spring.” - Lily Pulitzer
I’ve struggled here lately to come up with exactly the correct word to describe the essence of the coming of the last frost. The correct word seems to be important, somehow. The Thesaurus was absolutely no help with suitable adjectives. That particular little odd book of words has been known to be more than a bit useless for quite sometime now. Not too sure why the strange tool is supposedly still hiding around the house somewhere, given the wide, wide world, of the world wide web. ‘Excited' is the one precise word that I get hung up on sometimes, most of the time, when it comes to the day, or night, of the last frost.
Tore up is a more apt description of what happens to me this time of year. Tore up is two words, I know. The last of the frost may take two words to describe what goes on in this tortured mind after a seemingly endless winter. I’m fairly certain the two words, tore up, is not in the Thesaurus. Nor are they next in line with the other myriad of descriptors that are suitable substitutes for the word ‘excited’.
Tore up may just go a long way in explaining why I generally make the call for the last frost a week or two early. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve begun to doubt even that mysterious thing they, the slick haired weathermen, refer to as the ‘European Model’. They seem to want to incessantly sell us this particular little foreign weather model four to five times a day. I do not necessarily think this model is anything overly accurate or exceptional. Maybe it’s that I don’t really trust Europeans, or their models, (Elizabeth Hurley and Kelley LeBrock were exceptionally fine models) any more than I think swine will fly.
They, TV weather people, seem to occasionally sandwich this overly excited weather related model crap in between advertisements paid for by grey suited goofy lawyers, sporting bright silk ties and funny haircuts. These boys are a major set of goof-balls who seem to want to grandstand on top of 18 wheelers, cross armed, screaming, while in the company of some large chested “young thing” in form fitting, slick slacks and a tighter sweater.
These are middle aged clowns in suits and ties, that promise thousands of dollars in your pockets if you get paid before they get paid. How did they get on top of an 18 wheeler to begin with? Maybe they incorporated the ‘European Model’ to lift them up on top of these overly deadly vehicles. Why do these two advertisement buying barristers think that the young thing in the tight sweater will sway you or me to choose them to get them paid? Maybe it’s some kind of a European concept. Back to the frost would be better.
So, the baby tomatoes and the tender squash and cucumbers inevitably need little frost proof head covers for three or four nights after I’ve lost my mind. Lost due to being all tore up about the official beginning of spring.
The modest disdain for advertised TV weather prediction and planting by the ‘signs’ in the Farmers Almanac probably explains why I mistakenly ripped the young plants out of the greenhouse, gently set them in the cold dirt too early once again. If you believe, like I apparently do, that slick haired TV meteorological sales personnel are more wrong multiple times more than they are right, it’s relatively easy to get all tore up about frost free spring planting.
Everything is slowly but suddenly, gloriously new again. The long winter is officially, thankfully, dead and gone again. Spring: It’s like keeping a bull out of a dairy lot when the fence was down. (That metaphor was borrowed from Rick Bragg)
Tore up includes that new, bright and shiny, evolving shades of pale green. Shades of new pale and soft green means the mother crappie are now officially much easier to catch, trout are rising in clear mountain streams and catfish are stupid enough to fool just about anywhere spring runoff spills from muddy and small creeks into the slowly filling river.
Tore up includes the astonishingly long anticipated opening of turkey season. The old ten gauge double barrel has been meticulously re-wrapped in new camo tape for superior invisibility.
No more hay to feed. No more wood to split. No more frozen pipes to thaw. Worrying about whether the weed eater will start again can surely wait a few more weeks.
One of my hunting and fishing partners, and that partnership goes back more decades than I care to capture on paper, came by recently with a gift of three slightly used turkey decoys. He had just survived an attack of a robot that was directed to remove a rather overly delicate piece of his anatomy. A piece of anatomy that had suddenly, badly, decided on its own, to head south.
This life saving little diagnosis was according to some saw-bones specialist who apparently loves to tell robots what to do and where to do it. I guess some doctors now days don’t like to get heir hands all messy when one’s anatomy gets all tore up.
My buddy said this little incident with being tore up by a robot included a pretty lengthy and intensely brutal period of recovery. But now, he is relieved to say, that he can once again, peel the paint off of porcelain.
The downside of all that robotic intrusion is that he is announcing his retirement from chasing turkeys. With that declaration out of the way, we revisited many previous hunts, misses and successful mountainous expeditions over the gifted decoys. While it was sort of sad to hear the end of his turkey hunting, it was beyond good to recollect hunts past and hopes of hunts with some new decoys in the near future. Some springs are tore up for all kinds of strange reasons, I guess.
This spring i’ve pretty much decided to swear off of any duck and goose hunting that includes driving more than an hour in the dark. This sort of oath is probably a tore up spring kind of thing. The duck and goose decoys are gathering dust in the barn again. That may likely all change, like it does every winter, but swearing off waterfowl hunting surely is just another spring related, tore up sort of thing.
It also may explain why there are six little geese and six baby ducks penned up with chicken wire out in the yard, fertilizing the new grass. Two of the ducklings resemble mallards. Everything else seems to resemble what we used to refer to as Easter ducks. I’m betting they’ll all turn out white by the time they make it to the transfer portal in the pond. Hope springs eternal.
Maybe we can keep the coyotes, foxes, coons, owls and hawks out of their hair between now and next winter. Maybe they’ll perform as live decoys come fall. Maybe a few Yankee ducks will be lured close enough for the pot, and driving less than an hour in the dark will be the blessed outcome. Right now they’re just another strange manifestation of being once again tore up each spring. Who knew 12 little fuzzy birds could crap so much?
Watching little birds, daily grow feathers, gazing into the new pale green an unfolding spring is still much more entertaining than watching SEC basketball and Netflix in my tore up mind.
No more frost is definitely something to celebrate even when you’re tore up.
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