Editor's Note: The following column was written to be published last week but had to be held over until this week because of space limitations.
Have you noticed ? The days are getting longer, a couple of minutes more of sunlight every day. A minute more in the morning and afternoon and soon an additional minute thrown in as the annual cycle moves us toward spring and summer. You can't stop Mom Nature.
She (that's Mom) recently tossed us a soft curve following those dreary, drizzly, damp days of early January with several spring-like days -- 70 degrees one afternoon. A perfect time for me to rake up bushels of leaves which had collected on the lawn, in dormant flower beds and knee deep against the fence and foundation.
Compared to the usual autumn cycle, the leaf-fall pattern was crazy this fall. A sudden cold snap apparently broke the normal cycle, causing the leaves to linger on the limbs. Many held on until rains finally pried them loose where they congregated on lawns, and several days of moisture plastered them in place.
I opted to wait until it was dry enough to rake. Wrong. That was a mistake. I waited too long and the job was twice, three times, as hard as usual.
There was one bright spot. I wasn't going to mention it until the other day when someone asked how the sweet gum ball crop was this year. He, who shall remain nameless, joked, "You don't have a couple of bushels you'd spare, do you?"
For new Cuff readers, my sweet gum tale of woe has been an annual story for several years as I griped about how those pesky, prickly balls linger on the trees, how they fall throughout the winter, forcing a rake job about every two or three weeks until ... well, sometimes until May. They are persistent little rascals that, unless they are cleaned up, make for quite a racket during mowing time. Almost as bad as black walnuts that aren't harvested in the fall.
This time I got to report there wasn't a single ball on our huge sweet gum tree. But I added, "I have a couple of bushels left from last year I'll let you have at a premium price," 'nuff said.
The warm days, coupled with being in the yard and reinforced by leafing (pun intended) through a couple of seed catalogs, caused me to rethink my plan to forego a garden this year. Looking at pictures of those juicy red tomatoes, perfect ears of corn, hands full of snap beans, bell peppers the size of cantaloupes, cucumbers hanging in clusters, okra plants taller than I can reach ... putting all that together resulted in a wind change.
The garden plot, make that my postage stamp farm, has been cleared and, when it gets dry enough, I'll have to get out the spade fork and scratch around while eyeballing where this and that should be planted.
This year's garden will be a doozie, like those gardens of past years were supposed to be. Ah well, that's the fun, the exercise of hoeing and weeding and trying to keep the deer and moles at bay, as well as just digging in the dirt, that make the process enjoyable. Joy can come in many different packages.
Originally, I had planned to write about the President vs. Congress mess in Washington and/or the challenges facing our Governor and the state legislature, but I chickened out. You're welcome.
'Till next time, or whenever, keep the faith!
Dodie Evans is the former editor and owner of the Gravette News Herald. Opinions expressed are those of the author.
Editorial on 02/04/2015