Go Crazy.

OK, people. OK. This is the only entry I knew was coming for sure and certain when I started this project. We are now officially on semi-panicked freeze watch and wind watch. It may get as low as 33 degrees Sunday night. We're supposed to get thunderstorms tomorrow and Saturday. All the interns need to report to the front desk. Battle stations, please. The Japanese magnolia is showing color.


What to do about all this? Well, if you'll open the packets I've prepared for each of you, you'll see that in certain years past we have had the tree hit by freeze, thus resulting in the flowers turning brown and frozen and dead and dropping onto the driveway and causing the deep and abiding sadness here at ANYLF. There is also this: A big wind will knock flowers off if they're already in bloom, and a bigger wind will take buds down no matter what. So. Between now and, oh, Tuesday, I'm going to have to ask each of you to check the forecasts as often as possible, to look endlessly out the window during any and all wind gusts, to consider such lunacies as lighting charcoal fires underneath the tree Sunday night in the hopes that you can keep the buds from freezing. Which you cannot. There is nothing you can think of that will help. The tree gets right at all of the parts of you that are most damaged— you love it a little more than you should, and there's nothing at all in the world you can do to do anything for it other than to wait and freak out and check the three local TV stations and The Weather Channel and NOAA. All the time. Any other time of year at all you want the crazy TV weather types showing you the big red L, the track of the storm, the jagged cold front, the possibility of a late freeze. For these ten days you want still damn quiet. The tree, the tree, the tree. Your wife cannot understand what the hell is wrong with you. But you know. You know. This is why you're interning here at ANYLF. We are all the same in this regard. Aren't we? We are. So stick with me on this one, kids, and I'll write you glowing rec letters when the term's over. OK? OK. Now go back outside and take ten more pictures of buds.


Oh. Right. The weather? Yesterday: perfect. Today: better. It's tomorrow we need to worry about. So start worrying.