May 7, 2007
MANN TALK: The Year Winter Killed Spring
By Perry Mann
Hinton, WV (HNN) -- This crime began in December, 2006. Winter conspired with Fall. The deal was that Winter would give Fall access to its turf in December so that Spring’s children would flower early only to be killed later by a blast from Winter.
In December fall, in accordance with the conspiracy, brought the warmth of October to winter. The crocuses proclaimed spring and gave the world their color and hope. The daffodils, unaware of the conspiracy, sent up their vanguard to meet with the sun and were so hopeful that they dispatched their buds in preparation to embellish the earth with their ineffably exquisite creations, creations generated by miracle-makers in subterranean bulbs during the long wait from fall to spring and during the barrenness of the freeze following fall in order to color and gladden the earth with Mt. Hoods , Pheasant Eyes, and all their family.
Then, winter in keeping with the conspiracy descended with a vengeance, oppressing the daffodils with nights of sub-freezing temperatures. The daffodils, some out of the ground by six inches or more with buds, stood their ground upright steadfastly. Morning after morning after nights of freeze, the daffodils were still there waiting for spring to rescue them. Finally, winter in conspiracy relented and spring came in March.
The daffodils flourished and flowered. They appeared everywhere upright with faces to the sun along with the tulips, their cousins. Spring had come. The redbud readied to cheer travelers. The service trees prepared to dapple with white the barren hills. The dogwoods began to open their buds. The apple trees bloomed. The cherry trees became brides. Winter was at last a memory.
But winter, having observed the tactics of the insurgents in the lands of the deserts -- whereby they bomb and when relief comes to succor the victims, they bomb the relievers -- used the same villainous plot to kill spring. During spring’s heyday, April, winter descended again to rout her with an arctic offensive: days and nights of dead-winter cold. The fields of the killing were littered with her family.
The daffodils and tulips bent their heads to face the ground as if sending a message of supplication to winter to have mercy. The cherry trees and apple trees felt the scorch of freeze and their bloom browned in death. The freeze hit the rose bushes, which had sent forth tentative, miniature leafage, and left the leafage moribund. The blast froze to a standstill the service, redbud, the dogwood and other vernal favorites.
The giant maple trees, whose seeds are dispersed in April in a shower of spiraling, copter-like gyrations--- presenting a drama of musical movements and a swirling symphony---had to watch as clumps of its dead seeds drop, as if weighted with lead, to earth. Tens of thousands of these seeds, alive, pregnant with a tree, were destroyed by the plot.
The lilac---the flower that Ceres found in response to Jupiter’s request, when his romance was new, that she find for Juno the flower that had the ultimate beauty and fragrance---suffered a nip in bud. In exposed areas, the lovely pinkish-tinted violet flower with the look and the scent that never cloy or tire the eye and nose, perished in the bud. A killing beyond forgiveness. What is spring absent the lilac? It’s fall with no color.
An orchardist reported that he had three thousands apple trees and that he feared he would not harvest an apple. Think of the enormity of this crime. A tree with a thousand buds--- a thousand potential apples---times three thousands trees, destroyed by winter’s foray into spring’s reign and lease of seasons. Of plant life, winter has had its massacre.
But winter did not kill with genocidal thoroughness. In my back yard, which is sequestered, there is a lilac bush and a golden-delicious apple tree, both of which escaped the deadly chill. They not only escaped but in sympathy with all their lost relatives and in defiance of winter, they blossomed above and beyond their normal call. The lilac’s mass of blossoms and its fragrance exceeded all previous years. The apple tree doubled its normal blooms. It was covered from toe to top. And the bees, particularly the bumblebees, swarmed in it seeking the sweets it could not extract from the cherry and other blooms deadened by the freeze. When the sun warmed my backyard, the bees went about their work in a frenzy. The result is that this apple tree is so loaded with pregnant blooms that it will need props to keep its limbs from breaking come fall.
The cherry trees in my backyard are barren, in spite of their offering to the sun countless blooms. Winter killed them, every one of them. All they can do is leaf and store for another spring. It will come and fall will not conspire again with winter to kill spring.
Nature, the lord of all seasons, will not allow it. She will have winter and fall in the dock to answer for the conspiracy and the crimes of it. They will be found guilty, for the entire world is aware of the crime and the damages thereof. And come the next winter, the defendants will conform to Nature’s sentence: Fall will not obey winter and winter will not invade April, to do so will subject those seasons to the penalties of treason.
Perry Mann is a former teacher, a lawyer, a former prosecuting attorney of Summers County and a regular columnist for the Nicholas Chronicle in Summersville and Huntington News Network.
