Six years ago today, I got on an airplane in Boston to head to Los Angeles. Later that day, the National Weather Service officially reported that the winter 2014-2015 was the snowiest year since we started keeping track of such things. We had, at that point received 108.6 inches, breaking a record set in 1994-1995 when the Boston Globe had kept track of snow totals by showing how much the total snow accumulation compared to the height of Robert Parish, the 7-foot, 1-inch center on the great mid-80s Celtic teams. The total amount that year was roughly equal to where the top of a snorkel would have been if Parish was standing up with the snorkel in his mouth.
Today’s #stampoftheday reminded me of that hellacious winter not because it has to do with snow but rather because it celebrates gardening and horticulture. A 3-cent stamp issued on March 15, 1958, it honored Liberty Hyde Bailey, noted horticulturalist who was born on March 15, 1858. Bailey not only founded the College of Agriculture at Cornell University in 1888, he also co-founded the American Society for Horticultural Science; wrote 65 books; helped found the Junior Naturalist Club, which helped inspire the 4-H movement; chaired a national commission that paved the way for the Cooperative Extension System; and also played a major role in the establishment of the nation’s parcel post system and rural electrification.
The idea that anything would grow in Boston seemed a remote dream in late February of 2015 when I was planning my trip to Los Angeles. Almost 95 inches of that snow had fallen between January 24 and February 22nd, which, by far, was record snowfall for a 30-day period. Much of that snow had come in four epic storms in three weeks, each of them producing at least a foot of snow. The snowbanks on the side of my driveway were so high that I could barely throw the snow high enough to clear it and the new snowblower I borrowed from my neighbor, who had the same problem, was only a little better.
So I was very happy to be heading to Los Angeles. I wasn’t going for a vacation (though it certainly felt like I was getting to escape from Boston). Rather, I was going to interview about 15 people (in 5 days) for a case study I was writing on a 2008 referendum that increased the local sales tax to fund transit and road improvements in Los Angeles County, a measure that, at the time, raised more money (by far) than any other transit referendum in the country’s history.
A few weeks earlier, while planning my trip, I sat in my kitchen talking on the phone with the amazing Jody Litvak, director of local government and external affairs for LA Metro, who was helping me set up many of those interviews. I said something like, “Jody, I have to tell you, I’m really looking forward to being in Los Angeles. I’m looking out my kitchen window at the back steps. The snow is so deep, I can’t see the railing and I can barely open the door. And it hasn’t been above freezing for over a month.”
“David,” she replied. “Let me tell you something. The snow will melt; spring will come; and your flowers will come up. And we still won’t have any water in Los Angeles.”
I thought of what she said when I returned to Boston a week later (with pages of notes and hours of recorded interviews), I was happy to see that some of the snow had, in fact, melted. But there was, as yet, no sign of flowers.
But a week after that, when my wife (another Jody) and I went to North Carolina to see my mother, we saw lots of flowers. We were so happy that we all but kissed the ground (or maybe we did; I can’t recall. That’s why I used to love going to North Carolina in March (and hope to do so again in the future. If you live in New England, it’s like seeing “coming attractions” for spring.
Spring did, in fact, finally come to Boston that year. I don’t recall much about it. I’m sure we spent a lot of time outside, gardening (Jody doing flowers; me growing vegetables.). We got an early taste of spring last week, when it was unusually warm – so warm that I sat outside and worked for a few hours. And for the first time in several months, we lit our fire pit, turned on our radiant heaters, and had an outdoor, socially-distanced, COVID-aware dinner with our neighbors.
But it got cold again on Sunday and there were snow flurries as well. We often claim Mark Twain said, “if you don’t like the weather in New England, wait a minute.” He didn’t. What he did say was: “I reverently believe that the Maker who made us all makes everything in New England but the weather. I don’t know who makes that, but I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerk’s factory who experiment and learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere if they don’t get it.”
At some point, the weather will relent and it will be spring and I’ll head back to my garden. When I do, I’ll Liberty Hyde Bailey’s advice in mind. “A garden requires patient labor and attention,” he once noted. “Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them.”
Be well, stay safe, give your actual and metaphorical gardens the “patient labor and attention” they need to thrive, fight for justice, and work for peace.