Go with the gut feelings....

  Pop always told me that cabbages were cold hardy enough to stand most of the chills we get this far south.  He said that most greens were the same.  Late yesterday afternoon, I had the crazy idea that I needed to cover the garden plants.  Everyone said that a "hard freeze" was in the works for the night and that preparations should be taken to protect "plants, pipes and people".  I fretted over my cabbages.  Son and I toted blankets out to the garden and covered the rows.  To my despair, we ran out of covers before we ran out of cabbages!  So be it!  I could only do so much!  The cabbages were on their own.  If the cold was going to get them, there was not much I could do.

  This morning, I eased into the garden while the thermometer was still registering below the freezing mark.  While it was no record breaking freeze, it was pretty darn cold out there. Surprisingly, the exposed cabbages did not look too bad!  In fact, when I peeled back the blankets, the exposed ones did not look any worse than those covered!  Cabbages are, indeed, cold hardy!

  The point of this whole post is that I should have known better than to fall into the "panic" that folks tend to express.  Being raised on a farm by the best gardener ever, you would have thought I knew better.  I did.  I still fell to the panic mongers that portray everything to be dire.  No more.  I learned a lesson.  All the covering of the garden did was to present me with 5 loads of laundry.  The blankets used were wet and dirty.  The washing machine ran almost constantly today.  I should have listened to that gut feeling instead of yammering mouths.  Pop was right.