After a couple of weeks of relaxation california-style, I'm back home and adjusting to life in Chattaroy. Where it's already freezing at night, so that I have spent several hours in the last two days building an elaborate tent around my dad's zinnia bed to preserve it from the frost. Dad can't bear to lose his zinnias to the September frost when October will roll around nice and warm and pose no threat to the blossoms. I remember the time that Great-Grandpa Beaudry was amazed at our flowers having lasted until Thanksgiving, and I think Dad's been trying to repeat that performance ever since. Never mind that the weather of that fall has not been repeated since. Anyway, Dad is in Reno for a visit, and that leaves me and Grandpa Nordhagen to protect the zinnias. I wouldn't have put much effort into it, but Grandpa was determined, and since I was here, there was no escape for me. A structure resembling a tent, formed from 8-foot steel t-posts formed into cradles for a pine ridgepole, various tarps and many lengths of orange bailing twine, now squats over the flowerbed like a clumsy giant attempting to protect Thumbelina. It's quite possibly a lost cause. The other possibility is that because I spent so many hours erecting this monument to floral preservation, the weather will remain warm just to spite me. Whatever the weather does, I'm not unwrapping those flowers. Let them huddle in the dark until Dad gets back on Monday... I can't bear another hour of Grandma's insistent "Now be careful, don't break off that flower stalk!" at 30 second intervals, and followed regularly by Grandpa's "Honey, we may ruin a few, but we're saving hundreds!." The first 20 iterations on this included my interjection, directed at Grandpa: "She's just saying we don't need to break more than we have to." For the next 20, I turned my efforts to calming Grandma: "Don't worry, Grandma, I'm being really careful, not many are being hurt." That was yesterday. Today began with a call from Grandpa, just wondering if I'd uncovered the flowers, but not too much, because it'd be colder tonight. Early afternoon brought the old green pickup roaring into the vicinity for a load of water (yes, water), and as I opened the gate for it to head back to the water spigot at the barn, Grandpa stopped and reviewed the entire flower/frost situation again, exhorting me to wrap those flowers up tight. Before sunset Katie and I went out to secure the general floral well-being, and found our ears turning toward the road as a green-pickup-like din announced the presence, yet again, of our grandparents. Had they come solely to ensure that the flowers were properly attended to? Did they really have that time to spare, between the escapades of their cattle and the county-wide efforts at herding the bovine rebels back home several times a day? No, in fact they'd come for more water. Water is instrumental in keeping the cows home. It's complicated. I'll tell you later. Anyway, we further discussed the dangers of ice crystals and the potential of the southwest wind to aid us in averting catastrophic zinnia death while the water barrels were filled, waved good-bye, and went back to tying tarp to tarp to fence to post to house to brick to log to tarp until, well after dark, we retired to the comfort of hot fudge and scrabble by the wood stove. Let the flowers live or die, I wash my hands of the whole affair.
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