It used to be you could count on things. The smell of thawing dirt in late March, a sure sign that winter was finally letting go. The first robin a few weeks later. And my hydrangeas, they always knew exactly when to start thinking about blooming.
Not this year. Or last year. Or the year before that, frankly. My big blue hydrangea bush, the one my grandmother planted right by the porch, well, it’s just confused.
It put out some leaves in early April, then that cold snap came in May and just zapped them. Had a good cry about it, I bet. Then it put out more leaves, bless its heart, only for it to be eighty degrees in June, making it think summer was really here. Now we’re in July, and it looks like a teenager who can’t decide what to wear. Some green, some yellow, a few sad, tiny buds that seem to be asking, “Is it safe yet?”
It’s not just my hydrangea, mind you. I was talking to Elara Peterson over at the nursery, and she said her lilacs are all out of whack. Blooming in fits and starts, like they’re having an argument with themselves. She said they’ve never seen such a jumbled-up spring. “It’s like the plants don’t trust the calendar anymore,” she told me, and she’s been selling petunias since before the bypass was built.
It makes you wonder what else is getting confused. The birds, for example. Are they flying north and then thinking, “Wait a minute, this doesn’t feel right”? Or the bears, waking up from hibernation only to find a snow squall one week and a heat wave the next. It just can’t be good for them.
Some folks say it’s just a funny year. “Montana weather, Phyllis!” they’ll exclaim, like I haven’t lived here since before the first stoplight at Four Corners. Yes, I know Montana weather. What I know is a predictable kind of unpredictable. A winter that feels like winter. A spring that knows its job.
It’s almost like the seasons themselves are feeling a little crowded, or like they’re trying to move too fast. Everything used to have its time. Now, it seems like everything is trying to happen all at once, or not at all. And my poor hydrangea is just sitting there, trying to make sense of it all. I suppose we all are, in our own ways.
Phyllis Grainbelt has lived in the Gallatin Valley her entire life and remembers when the Co-op was just a co-op. She does not elaborate on what this means.