Long-time readers may recall the on-going saga of the lilacs. I love lilacs, both their vibrant purple flowers (mine are, although many varieties are not) and their intense fragrance, but while growing lilacs in Cedar City isn’t particularly difficult, growing lilacs and being able to appreciate their full beauty and fragrance is more than a little problematic given the vagaries of the weather at 6,000 feet in the mountain west.

This year, I thought, there might be a good chance to enjoy the lilacs in their full glory. Begining in late January, the weather was so unseasonably warm that every day, the high temperature either flirted with the all-time high for that day or exceeded it. By early March, the nightly lows were above freezing and the daily high temperatures were in seventies (fahrenheit) or even the eighties. Snow and frost were non-existent.

The lilacs, usually slightly cautious, finally decided to start to bloom by around mid-March… and then just as the intensely purple flowers began to blossom, on the last Thursday in March… you guessed it, we had three nights of hard frost… immediately after which the temperatures returned to unseasonably high levels once more.

Perhaps half the lilacs sort of bloomed, and looked beautiful. The other half remained stunted and didn’t open, and none of them emitted even the slightest trace of the ineffable lilac fragrance.

What I’d like to know is, again, why the weather gods so delight in teasing me with the lilacs.