Minnesota weather—June frost and relative humility ~ June 5, 1986

David Heiller

Minnesotans are a humble folk. We aren’t known for our decisiveness, our positive thinking. Ask someone how they’re doing, and they’ll likely reply, “Not too bad,” or “I can’t complain,” “Pretty good, I guess.”

Even my three-year-old son realizes his humble fate. He thinks we live in Maybe-Soda, and Grandma Olson lives in Maybe-Applis. It’s a state-wide shyness flowing from Lake Wobegon to Lake City, from Worthington to Warroad. Steve Cannon of WCCO is perhaps the only person in the state with relative humility, and that’s just during the weather report.

 Noah thinks we live in Maybe-Soda,
 and Grandma Olson lives in Maybe-Applis.

I had some personal insight into al this on Sunday. Last week’s weather had broken all kinds of records. Duluth had 86 degrees on May 28, International Falls: 91. We were somewhere in between. The warm weather held through Friday, as we got our garden ready for spring planting. I even took a day off for the ritual. Cindy, my wife, drove with confidence to a greenhouse and bought 24 tomato sets, 12 peppers, and some odds and ends for the weekend planting.

The last of the garden beds were finished by Sunday. Cindy and Noah went to church in the morning, while Malika and I stayed home and fertilized the soil with bone meal and blood meal. Sunday afternoon, under 60 degree, partly cloudy skies, we planted tomatoes and peppers and flowers and Brussels sprouts. The clouds broke, sunlight blessed our hard work, and a lady on the radio said temperatures would be in the 70s on Monday.

After the kids were tucked away Sunday evening, I returned to the garden. Two robins chirped to each other in the spruce trees. A pair of goldfinches sat atop the end spruce, the bright gold male a step higher on the branches than his mate. Two cedar waxwings perched quietly in the dead branches of the elm tree next to the house. The wrens nesting in their home on the clothes line pole stayed inside, the mother warming her tiny eggs.

God was in his heaven, all was right with the world. It was enough to make a Minnesotan downright confident and happy, even a newspaper editor. I brought a paper bag full of old newspapers to the tomato beds, and started to spread them next to the plants. The first batch held shoppers. I placed them with a vengeance on the ground, thinking they would finally be put to a good use. Then I opened up a Pine County Courier, and laid Richard Coffey next to a plant. I felt like reading his column first, but knew he would understand, and his wife Jeanne would be proud to have him play such an active role in weed control.

But I soon ran out of other newspapers and even the Omni-present shopper. I went to the garage for a bag of Askov Americans. I had been saving them to submit to the National Newspaper Association Better Newspaper Contest, which is why they were still in the garage. Relative humility.

I spread them around the tomatoes. Joel Mortensen crowded one plant. “That one will have a strong taste,” I thought. One of my outhouse columns nestled another. Good fertilizer there.

Soon the tomatoes were nicely mulched. I sprinkled hay on all the crooked headlines and blurred photos, and walked into the house feeling very content. Humble, as only a person who can put a year’s worth of work on his tomatoes feels, but content.

The story should end there, but remember, folks, this is Minnesota. Our one-year-old daughter woke up with a cry at 1 a.m. She may have sensed the danger and warned us. As I stumbled in parent stupor for baby aspirin, I glanced at the outdoor thermometer. Suddenly the stupor disappeared. Thirty-five degrees and falling.

I hurried outside, grabbed the flashlight from the car. I carried sheets from the garage, plastic, blankets, anything I could find, and spread it all over the tomatoes and peppers. I knew I couldn’t sleep till they were all covered.

Cindy called me at work Monday morning. I knew before she said a word the bad news, like a phone call in the middle of the night when a relative is sick.

“The tomatoes, David, all but three have died.”

“Which three didn’t?” I asked. I hope they had been mulched with the American.

“The first three,” she answered.

I started to swear on the phone, then stopped. My Minnesota Confidence had glowed for a day. What the heck. It’s not so bad. We’ll buy more tomatoes. I can’t complain.