By James McGuire
Contributing columnist
Last Monday, soon after daybreak, I let Daisy Dog out for her morning constitutional and followed her onto the front deck.
Whoa! It was cold!
Not brisk or chilly or cool—cold!
I’d barely managed two steps beyond the doorway when my sleep-groggy brain registered distress. An involuntary, teeth-clinching shiver wracked my spine.
It felt more like mid-March than early June!
I did an abrupt about-face, reached back inside, and grabbed the thick fleece hoodie I kept hanging by the door.
The old thermometer hanging on the dooryard box elder said it was 54 degrees. That seemed optimistic.
While Daisy busied herself snuffling along the fenceline cedars, attending to business, I lifted the lid on the galvanized storage barrel and tossed out the usual three-scoop ration of cracked corn.
Several goose families, young and old, would soon arrive expecting breakfast. I do my best to accommodate.
The sun was still somewhere to the east, below the horizon. In the dim dawn light, the nearby river was like a dark, opaque mirror. I could just make out the pale driftwood jumble on the long gravel bar across from the cottage. But the overhead sky was overcast, so even when that hidden sun did make it up, it would likely remain unseen, veiled behind the low-hanging clouds.
Daisy returned from her reconnoitering. I finished my morning waterfowl feeding, closed the barrel’s lid, and made sure it was secure against the inevitable barrage of pilfering attempts by the red squirrels. My dog and I then hurried back inside.
I hastily set about warming my innards with mugs of strong coffee.
You’d assume my gelid brain would also have been simultaneously prodded awake with the caffeine. But apparently not—because later that morning, when I set out to run several errands to nearby stores…I departed woefully underdressed!
I own a closet full of outerwear—jackets, coats, parkas, flannel and wool shirts, sweaters, down-filled vests, and fleece pullovers. I can easily dress to stay warm in any weather.
Yet on Monday—even after my spine-numbing morning experience—I still foolishly set out wearing shorts, sneakers, and a thin denim shirt.
With each successive stop and the dose of necessary outside exposure, my discomfort increased.
I turned the car’s heater on while driving. But multiple scurried trips across exposed parking lots, where cold winds chilled me to the bone, soon turned discomfort into misery.
I’m no masochist. Two-thirds of the way through my errands list, suffering won—I gave in and headed home.
When I got back to the house, I found my wife had a dandy fire blazing away in the woodstove. A wonderful blanket of radiant heat enveloped me the moment I entered the room.
My wife was snugly ensconced in the recliner, tapping away at her tablet’s keypad.
Daisy was stretched out on the hearth rug. She turned her eyes my way but didn’t lift her head, though she thumped a pleasantly languorous tail-wag greeting.
“You’ve saved my life!” I exclaimed to my wife, savoring the delicious warmth, truly grateful for her foresight.
“Umm-m,” she said. “Actually, it was too cold in here when I got up. You hadn’t started a fire before you left—so I did.”
She glanced up, then reached over for the mug of tea on the small table at her elbow.
“You were right,” she said, taking a sip. “That daylily cold snap you predicted arrived right on schedule.”
It took me a moment to remember the conversation we’d had a few weeks back. Temperatures were soaring into the high 80s, and she’d said something about summer arriving early.
“Well, until we have a setback,” I replied. “We almost always have one about the time the orange daylilies bloom.”
While Monday’s sudden cold snap was a surprise, it wasn’t unexpected. Such weather setbacks are not so much true anomalies as anticipated vagaries.
“Little winters” the old folks called them. Brief regressions lasting a day or two to perhaps a week.
The major ones that showed up pretty regularly, year after year, had names—Dogwood Winter, Locust Winter, Blackberry Winter. Appellations phenological in origin, each cold snap setback coinciding with the time when the namesake plant is in bloom.
What I think of as the “orange daylily cold snap” is not a weather setback that’s generally severe enough to be a true “little winter”—rarely getting cold enough to frost—but it’s nevertheless cold enough to give you a shock early in the morning, or cold enough to make you think and feel like you’re on the verge of freezing to death if you insist on running around outside too long while inadequately dressed.
Moreover, it always happens about the time our abundant orange daylilies come into glorious bloom.
My casual prophecy had, indeed, hit the mark.
Alongside the road, on stream banks, in field corners, and tucked back in the edge of certain damp woodlands where you’d think it ought to be too shady—numerous swathes of bright orange day lilies now stand in festive bloom. Some patches number their flowers in dozens, a few in hundreds.
“It’s supposed to get down to 49 degrees tonight,” my wife said, giving me a look, expecting a comment.
“The good news,” I said, scooting my rocker closer to the stove, “is after this little weather setback ends, it should be warm all the way through summer.”
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