DATE: Saturday, September 27, 1997          TAG: 9709270349

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B2   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Guy Friddell 

                                            LENGTH:   53 lines

SIGNS ABOUND OF WEATHER'S UNSEASONABLE SILLINESS

I have no patience whatsoever with the weather any longer.

Nearly everybody around here is exulting over the mild, moderate autumnal spell of the past week with cool nights, crisp days - a kind of season in between while the weather is making up its mind over what sneaky trick to pull on us next.

I'm like one of those big Canada geese, getting restive, feeling the outriders of winter bearing down on us. What scares this big goose is not so much whether the winter is going to be mild or severe, but whether it will have the decency to stay put in the right months.

Weather forecasters will tell you that this past winter was mild, ``overall,'' with no snow.

Yet, to me, the results were harsh and punitive, because winter extended its chilling grip into April, May and June.

There was no spring this year.

We just jumped right over spring into the latter part of summer - when a drought seized the region.

The watermelon, as much a herald of summer as any sign in the zodiac, was not his usual jolly, rotund self on July 4.

Melons were scarce and, when found, the meat tended to be measly pink instead of flaring vermilion, and was scarcely sweet.

Oh, now and then, good watermelons could be found in August and late September, but devotees missed, most of the summer, the definitive watermelon that matched those they have known most of their lives.

Cantaloupes were meager, and their early crops had little chance to mature. Had it not been for a late crop in August, the season would have been cantaloupeless.

Sweet corn and tomatoes were late. Tomato prices, which usually drop in August, held tight.

In Virginia Beach, agricultural extension agent Randy Jackson confirmed my impressions.

Very cool weather in spring, coupled with cold rains, depressed the soil temperature and slowed the growth of plants, he said Thursday.

``Our springs have been getting cooler and cooler for longer periods,'' Jackson noted.

This season, some farmers, when thwarted by unseasonable early weather, planted second crops in mid-summer.

Farmers in Hampton Roads may consider starting succession crops, Jackson suggested, so if the early crop doesn't arrive on time and has run its course by mid-summer, they can have a second crop coming along in the warm season to be harvested in fall. Farmers, the world's canniest gamblers, are quick to hedge their bets.

And as seasons are becoming more feckless as to when they occur on the calendar, consumers may grow ever warier of predictions.

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