Photo courtesy of Jerry Nelson It was so chilly during this spring’s first lawn mowing that the author had to wear winter clothing. But at least it wasn’t raining iguanas.

“Unusual weather we’re having, ain’t it?” – the Cowardly Lion, upon awakening to a snowstorm after a poppy party in the docudrama “The Wizard of Oz.”

We denizens of the prairie know that you don’t have to go somewhere over the rainbow to enjoy — or endure, depending on your point of view — unusual weather. Odd weather is normal, and normal weather seems peculiar.

I recently stumbled across a newspaper’s summary of a particular growing season in Brookings County. The season began with a February warm spell that persisted for more than fifty days. Pastures greened up and fruit trees blossomed weeks ahead of schedule. Migratory songbirds arrived and set up housekeeping.

But it was a premature paradise. The weather suddenly turned frosty and the entire fruit crop was lost. This was followed by a summer of erratic, spotty rains, the kind wherein one farmer would be deluged while his neighbor across the fence didn’t receive enough moisture to float a flea.

Crop yields that autumn ranged from “kind of a bummer” to “I don’t want to talk about it.” Farmers across the county began to mutter the mantra, “Maybe it’ll be better next year.”

Sounds like recent history, doesn’t it?

Nope. That weather report was from 1909. This just illustrates how farmers have a long tradition of being gamblers. And gluttons for punishment.

Our latest winter and spring have been normal in that they were abnormal.

This past winter was mostly snowless in our neck of the woods. That was a huge disappointment for school kids. They were hoping for so many snow days that the school’s administration would announce, “It’s no use; we’re just going to cancel the rest of the academic year. Because they were such good sports about this, all students be given an ‘A’ in all their subjects.”

This could be a teeny bit of projection. That was my favorite fantasy when I was a grade schooler.

With snow being so scarce, there was precious little snowmelt. This was a big disappointment for me. I enjoy few things more than watching meltwater gush through the pair of culverts south of our farm. If the water is high enough, twin whirlpools will form on the inlet side. A stick tossed into the water will be swiftly sucked into a swirling whirlpool and disappear. I find this both endlessly fascinating and deeply frightening. It makes you imagine what it might be like to be flushed down a ginormous toilet.

The non-winter was followed by a brief pseudo-summer. The first day of spring brought tropical temperatures; my weather gizmo recorded a high of 90 degrees. It was so warm that my wife and I actually considered wearing shorts. And at our age, wearing shorts in public could be considered a felony.

The concept of “it’s warm enough outdoors to wear shorts” is open to interpretation. We’ve seen college students sauntering about in shorts and a T-shirt when the mercury was hovering just a few degrees above zero. Maybe feeling the sting of incipient frostbite as you walk to Econ 101 is a form of higher education.

As often happens in this part of the world, April proved to be the cruelest month of them all. The heat wave was soon followed by a cold snap, punctuated by a smattering of snow.

You could almost hear the female robins exclaiming to their mates, “I wanted to stay at my mother’s place in Coral Gables for another two weeks, but no, you said that we had to get here before everyone else! Your stupid ‘the early bird gets the worm’ motto doesn’t work if it’s so cold that the worm is frozen and as stiff as a tenpenny nail!”

I understand that one of the problems Floridians face when the temperature plummets is iguanas falling out of trees. This would be very disconcerting, especially if you left your iguana umbrella at home.

What does their weather forecast sound like?

“Partly cloudy tomorrow morning with a 50% chance of falling iguanas.”

See? It could be worse.

Despite the chilly temperatures, our lawn got the idea that it was time to green up and grow. I had to make a choice: should I delay mowing the lawn until the weather warmed, in which case the grass would be tall enough to be officially listed as a jungle?

Or should I man up and get it done?

I opted to get ‘er done, even though the day was chilly with an icy wind roaring down from the northwest. I’m not a college student, so I wore my winter togs.

It felt odd to be mowing in the cold. But, hey, unusual weather is normal.

— Jerry’s book, “Dear County Agent Guy,” can be found at www.workman.com and in bookstores nationwide.