Can you believe this? RISK OF FROST. It is June 5!! We are well past the safe date in this region!

And as an aside, ahem, can you believe my awesomely instructive and informative graphic? Fades, arrows, highlights, and drop shadows. I had to reach deep into my USA Today brand pool of design tricks to create this little number. Carrying on.

I was out on the rooftop deck this morning giving the plants a once-over as usual when I looked to the east and saw an ominous view.

The wind was whipping at incredibly high speeds, the air was very cold, and the sky threatened nucleur fallout. I high-tailed it inside and closed the windows in time to avoid a hardcore downpour. It was unrelenting. And yet in my naive, It’s practically summer nothing can stop us now! haze it did not occur to me that I should bring some of the tender plants indoors or provide even the smallest bit of protection for them against the high winds. By late afternoon it finally dawned on me that t-shirt weather had indeed left the building so-to-speak so I ran outside and began pulling sad and floppy plants indoors as quickly as possible.

There is no rhyme or reason to the damage. Some peppers are as sturdy and strong as ever, while others are floppy and sad. Some tomatoes have completely flattened out and others are just as healthy as can be. Just about all of my hardening-off cucumbers and gherkins are slowly wasting away.

Yet despite the possible plant carnage I may be facing tomorrow I found myself taking on an air of superiority thinking about how right I was to recommend cloches for basil and other tender annuals during my appearance on the Gil Deacon Show last month, the topic of which was incidently on Gardening with Climate Change.

And then I had to laugh at myself because people, once again I did not take my own advice.