How’s the weather? This ever-present question dictates a myriad of things in our lives from what we wear to when we do the laundry. Just the other day I was planning to take my usual train to work, but then I saw that it was supposed to start raining when I would normally be walking. I decided to get an earlier train and in doing so, avoided having to walk in the rain. While this type of occurrence is played out countless times a day around the world, when I was growing up my family had an event that was so dictated by the weather that it became a hard-and-fast rule.
The rule was, No planting until after Mother’s Day. Living at around 1,450 meters in the central part of Arizona, we would usually experience a time of warming towards the end of March or early April in which our fruit trees would bloom only to have a cold spell later which would kill all the buds.
This unstable weather was on full display in a condensed form on May 5, 2007, my wedding day. That morning started out sunny giving me a chance to give our getaway car a wash. However, the sun was quickly replaced by dark clouds and a drastic drop in temperature bringing snow showers just before the wedding started. The snow lasted for a bit, turned into rain, and by the time the wedding festivities had ended, we were back to a glorious sunshine filled day. While this was just a short-lived weather change, the late freezes we could get into the beginning of May brought about this planting rule for my family. Needless to say, once Mother’s Day came, I knew that my help sowing seeds would be requested. Erik