The Mountain Eagle
WHITESBURG WEATHER

For those who wonder, wooly worm forecast still weeks away



Several people have been inquiring over the last 10 days as to when the wooly worm weather forecast will be coming.

Points East

The National Association of Wooly Worm Winter Weather Watchers (NAWWWWW) does not normally make its annual prognostication until it has weathered at least a couple or three killing frosts. We have made the prediction prematurely a few times and, on a few such occasions, the weather did not come close to bearing out the actual weather results.

I’ve seen a few woolies poking their noses out our cellar door during the first week of October, but they hurried back inside to crawl back under the air conditioning vents where they have been residing since last May. For months, they dared not set foot outside for fear of drowning. Then, in mid-August, they became scared of baking to death. Even though we had some rain early in the week and even though October has finally cooled down from all-time record high temperatures, I doubt that NAWWWWW is apt to get very serious about the coming winter before Election Day. Stay tuned and we’ll eventually tell you all about it.

In other news, if you are among the numerous readers who have taken time and postage to write me cards or letters over the last several weeks, thank you! Please excuse me for not answering my mail, but please know that you probably would not have been able to read it even if I had sent you paper mail. In fact, it’s very doubtful that the post office folks would be able to decipher anything I scribble well enough to get it anywhere close to your mail box. Mr. Parkinson normally refuses to allow my right hand to use a pen or pencil for anything other than weapons for self-defense.

Just last week I destroyed three envelopes before finishing the fourth one with an address that I believed to be legible enough to pass postal muster. I have never been able to master printing mailing mail labels on the computer, but if I have a glue stick handy I sometimes resort to typing an address and printing it out on regular printing paper before using scissors to clip it out so that I can glue it onto an envelope. This winter I may yet type up a list of addresses to all the folks who have taken time to write and see if I can talk Loretta into cutting them into mailing labels.

Actually, I’m pretty sure my wife knows how to run them through the peel-and-stick label maker on the computer printer. You may, yet, get an answer to your letters. If you get a greeting card, you’ll know where it came from.

Finally, even though I thought it had given up the ghost several weeks ago, we had 10 little “nubbin” ears of bodacious sweet corn, straight from the garden, for supper Sunday night. My brother, Andy, planted two short rows, each about 30 feet long, the last week of July. We had rain two or three times each week until the corn got about six inches tall. Then the rain stopped and stayed stopped from mid-August until October 6. Most of the corn stalks that normally grow to well over six feet tall barely reached two feet. Fewer than a dozen stalks grew taller than three feet and not a single one topped out at more than four feet from root to tassel.

Late last Saturday, I decided to see if we had any cucumbers ready to pick because the weather forecasters were saying that rain was coming and that it was a done deal. I’d been packing water to the “cukes” for several weeks and that’s the only reason we’ve had plenty. The corn would have required far more water than I could pack to make a difference.

While I was out there, I noticed a scant few stalks that had shucks and silks showing. Most of the shucks didn’t contain cobs, but I found exactly 10 that showed traces of firmness. Turned out that all ten cobs had enough kernels to make them worth boiling. Two of them were nearly five inches long.

I can’t wait to tell Andy that we’ve had a corn crop after all! I doubt that he’ll be jealous for not getting some of it.

Leave a Reply