Tip: When first frost hits this month, stay off the grass

Jack Frost will soon nip at our noses. Records show that by the end of November, at least one sunrise finds Hampton Roads encrusted in icy crystals, regardless of whether the mercury officially falls to freezing.

Frost is winter’s curtain-raiser, ushering out autumn’s last act, slaying the remnants of summer. Goodbye, geraniums. Adiós, impatiens. Bon voyage, begonias.

Only the warm embrace of ocean and bay has spared our landscape this long. Just west of here, frost has already made the growing season a memory, its bouquet withered to mush by frigid fingers that reach deep inside tender plants and rupture their cells.

Frost doesn’t wait for meteorologists to declare a freeze. Their instruments aren’t mounted at ground level. It’s there, down in the weeds, where still, clear nights bleed off the day’s stored heat and invite the coldest, heaviest air to settle.

So while the weathercaster is saying 36 degrees, the lawn is feeling 32.

Simply put, explained Andrew Zimmerman at the National Weather Service in Wakefield: “Water vapor in the air right next to the ground freezes. Instead of getting dew, you get frost.”

Cold-hardy plants have developed survival tactics, including cells that can withstand the pressure of expanding ice. Winter grass holds its own as long as it’s not stepped on.

Golf courses are mindful of that these days. Their long, open stretches often draw the first frosts. Already this fall, morning tee-offs at the Bide-A-Wee course in Portsmouth have been held up three times by a pearly white layer.

“If the ground is completely frozen, it’s no big deal,” said Andy Giles, Bide-A-Wee’s head pro. “You can walk on the course all day long. But if there’s just a frost, every step leaves a footprint – a dead, brown spot that doesn’t show up until spring.”

Frustrated golfers should consult the website of the United States Golf Association, where they’ll find a complicated explanation of frost-versus-freeze under the title “Playing Par with Jack Frost.”

“In old days, we’d let you go anytime,” Giles said. “No one cared.”

As for the rest of us, frost means farewells – obituaries written with a lacy, cold hand.

Rest in peace, petunias.

Joanne Kimberlin, (757) 446-2338, joanne.kimberlin@pilotonline.com