Over the past two years I have blogged several times
about one of my all-time favorite western humorists, Bill Nye. Nye started a newspaper
in Laramie, Wyoming, a paper with possibly the most unusual name for a paper in
America, The Laramie Boomerang. (Named after his mule that no matter how many
time he sold it or gave it away it kept coming back).
Am I going to get around to something here? Well,
yes. Nye was a humorist who reveled in poking fun at himself and Wyoming.
Living in Wyoming the weather is at best unpredictable, went to bed last night
as it started to snow, yep, snow in May. Still snowing when I got up this
morning and been snowing on and off most of the day.
On June 10, 1880, Bill Nye wrote in his book, Forty
Liars and Other Lies, about the weather. “It has snowed a good deal during
the week and it is discouraging to the planters of cotton and tobacco very
much. I am positive that a much smaller area of both these staples will be
planted in Wyoming this year than ever before. Unless the yield this fall of
moss agates and prickly pears should be unusually large the agricultural export
will be very far below preceding years, and there may be actual suffering.”
I feel about like that today looking out at my
garden covered in snow and dreaming of sometime actually planting on a warm sunshiny
day. Nye, later in the article went on to say, “Again the early frosts make
close connections with the late spring blizzards, so that there is only time
for a hurried lunch between.”
Warm weather and summer will come, I am just not sure
when. So why would an old gardener like me live in a tough to grow state like Wyoming?
Well, as real-estate agents are happy to point out, “its location, location,
location. And location, to me, is all about the view.
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| Elk last evening in Sybille Canyon |
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| Our little town from Powell Mountain five miles away |
The garden, on the other hand, will need to wait, at least a few more days.
