frost Archives - The Misfit Farmer

In the South, most people say “cut grass” instead of “mow grass.” Cut sounds a bit more aggressive and more accurately reflects our feeling toward vegetative maintenance after a long growing season. By the time our first frost date arrives, it seems like we’ve been cutting grass for a short eternity. I usually look forward to cutting grass in the spring, but by fall, it’s drudgery and my spring eagerness has turned into a general aversion toward chlorophyll.

Growing up, one of my first “jobs” was cutting yards with a push mower. I think this was supposed to instill in me a good work ethic, but mostly it started a pattern of poor life choices in regards to my means of generating income. Just to get my push mower to my main client, Mrs. Ernestine, meant I had to push it half a mile, uphill, past several houses with formidable canines. Most of these dogs were not well educated in laws regarding property lines or speed limits on public thoroughfares. I suppose it is rare for a push mower to break the speed limit, but you have to remember that the speed limit on small town streets was only fifteen miles per hour in those days, and I was a lot younger.

These days, even with a zero-turn riding mower, cutting grass is not merely as simple as jumping on the lawnmower, cranking up, and riding around in circles for a few hours. I’ve got to move all the stuff scattered around the yard—dead branches, Thomas’s bike and assortment of Fisher Price yard ornaments, and the cage traps I have deployed across the yard to try to thin out our local skunk herd. Then I have to walk to the barn to get my portable air compressor to pump up the front tire on the lawnmower. Then I have to fill up the lawnmower with gas. Likely, the gas can will contain ten drops, so I’ll have to journey to the gas station.

Some folks may wonder why I don’t just forgo grass in favor of a permaculture landscape. Rest assured, there is nothing more permanently cultured in my yard than wiregrass. You can’t kill it. If an asteroid plunged to earth and struck my house, in a matter of months the crater would be carpeted with wiregrass. It is an unstoppable force. Likely, that is why the dinosaurs went extinct—all the other vegetation withered away, and the dinosaurs just got tired of grazing wiregrass. Or, possibly wiregrass ate the dinosaurs.

The only thing that seems to phase wiregrass is frost. Hallelujah, we got our first frost last night.

a flat front tire and four empty gas cans–seems like a metaphor for my attitude toward grass.

Ugh, the weather these days. In Shelby, March was one of the warmest on record. People have been cutting grass for over a month, planting gardens (some of which already have corn stalks a foot high), and sneezing their heads off because everything is blooming early. Still, I didn’t take the bait. I diligently looked up the average last frost date for Shelby, April 14, and planned months ago to set out my young heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, and peppers a few days after that. And so I did.

Now, on the morning of April 24, 2012, we set a new record low for all April 24s in recorded meteorological history: 34° F. This previous record was held by April 24, 1893.

The official temperature is taken five feet above the ground, and since cold air sinks, the temperature at ground level is colder, say, 32° F. Of course, at 32 ° F frost forms and sure enough patchy frost covered the ground this morning. I didn’t want one of those patches to settle on and kill my plants, so last night the garden looked like an army of misfit boxes and flower pots in ranks across the field, protecting the plants. As far as I can tell, my plants came out unscathed, but my truck didn’t, as I put a small but deep scratch on it when I was backing up in the dark to return from the garden. Ugh.

On a brighter note, meteorologists are forecasting a cooler summer for the southeast because of El Nino.