One of my favorite guest speakers at the EMBA meetings is Grant Gillard.

I've heard Grant over the years talk about what he refers to as "Blackberry Winter". Down in south east Missouri, a bit south of where I am, there's a cold spell that corresponds to the blackberry bloom, usually around Mother's Day.

I've watched my own blackberry plants the past couple of years, and so far, Grant's weather predictions have been right on.

Spring seems like it's here, and then as soon as the blackberries bloom, we get cold, snow, freezing rain etc., one last time.

This year we've already enjoyed many days in the 70s, 80s and even 90*F, as spring is almost a full month early.

When I saw that my blackberry bushes had hundreds of flowers ready to bloom last weekend, I knew we had at least one more shot of cold weather coming.



Sure enough the past two nights have been down around 34*F in our area. We had to cover the plants to keep the frost off of them.

This short two-day cold snap is over (at least according to the weatherman) and we uncovered the all the various plants around the house.



My wife snapped this picture as bees were arriving in the early morning to check out the blooms.