snow on peonies

Snow was falling outside amongst the peony stalks while I finished up the day's chores. What a sight to behold, that. The gently falling snow through the afternoon sunlight, landing on the red shoots that look like a celery stalk left in a Bloody Mary too long. The snow fall did not last long, but it was a good reminder of what the weather forecast called for. They are calling for a night in the mid-twenties and that is a dangerous game Mother Nature is playing with us. Many of the apple trees have blossoms, and if they die to a late-spring frost it will hurt the apple harvest. It will hurt farmers who put in their greens early, egged on by 90 degree days in April and our mild winter. If the frost kills my kitchen garden I can shrug it off and plant new, but this isn't so if you're one of the hundreds of farmers in the north east tonight scrambling to cover your plants with row cloths. The greenhouse at Common Sense Farm has a running guard of people who need to stoke the woodstove all night. There are tomato plants with green fruits already on them there. They will surely die if the fire dies too. This is how I see the weather now, as chapters in the annual story. The protagonist and the villain. Part of me worries the twins will be born and lost to the cold. They are hardier than tomato plants, but I still fret. If the peonies die I lose some pink and white color in May. If the lambs die I lose the future.