Garden and Bad Weather
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Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is the Weather Notebook.

I'm not sure which came first - my mania for weather or my obsession with gardening, but I do know that the combination is often fatal to my peace of mind

Commentator David Laskin.

Of course these twin passions probably spring from the same deep well - a kind of cosmic suburban need to feel connected to the great cycle of the elements. But in fact on any given day I'm likely to be bouncing off the walls in a kind of frenzy of divided loyalty. Like that time last summer when I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of hail pounding on my roof. Since hail storms hardly happen in Seattle, I rushed outside to watch the peanut-sized ice pellets ricochet off my porch. I was still buzzing the next morning until I went out into the garden. My lettuce had been reduced to slaw! The tomatoes had broken out in acne. Broad-leafed plants like hostas looked like someone had sprayed them with BBs.

Being both a weather freak and a garden nut is kind of like watching your favorite athletes go head to head. No matter whom you root for you lose. Gardener's weather is so dull. Meteorologist's weather is so destructive. Weatherwise, when I'm not dying of boredom I'm agonizing over the violence of the very storms I'd been egging on in every forecast update.

But maybe there's hope for me yet. I hear that cloud seeding is making a come-back. Rain when you want it. Cultivating clouds. For a horticultural meteoromaniac, doesn't that sound like the best of both worlds rolled into one?

Writer David Laskin plants his garden and watches the weather in Seattle, Washington. The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory. The program is supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation and Subaru of America.