When I looked out my bedroom window last Saturday morning, I thought I might have developed cataracts overnight. Where the night before I was able to peer through the woods behind my house and spy a coy whitetail deer nibbling on my acorns, now all I could see was a sheet of white stuff hanging from the oak tree boughs.

I was hatched in October. My birthday is coming up and it has been my history to go wandering through the woods, across beaver dams, over hill and dale in search of a wily ruff grouse or rooster pheasant on my birthday. The years have treated me kindly for the most part and most of my birthdays were spent under crystal blue skies, gentle fall breezes and brown ground. No rubber boots or insulated coveralls were needed as I blasted tree branches out of the way to a grouse dinner. October used to be a gentle transition to what we northerners know must come shortly.

I've got a lot of work to do yet before snow is supposed to cover the earth. My garden produce is in storage, but I've got to chop corn stalks, drain the gas tank on my lawnmower, check the anti-freeze in the pick-up and drag my water hoses up to the stairs in our garage. I've got to try to sell all those pumpkins we raised this summer and pumpkins don't sell well with a snow-white background. I'm not through with my fall stuff yet.

Farmers are sitting in their kitchens looking out over that same white landscape and chewing their fingernails. Time is short this time of year to get the crop in and anyone who has spent any time in harvesting late season corn or soybeans knows that it is a fate to be avoided if possible. There is no pleasure in harvesting crops with snow on the ground. It is rough and ruddy work that chaps the faces and cracks the hands and plugs the combine. I'm not wishing that fate on any farmer. I've done it.

My amendment to the Bill of Rights banning snow in October would win broad approval, I would think. Those who have already slid into a ditch on the way to work would vote for it. Those who took a header on the sidewalk after slipping on a patch of ice would vote for it. Those who planned an outdoor wedding in the middle of October would vote for it.

Speaking of weddings, I just attended one for my wife's cousin's daughter. I visited with the new bride a bit while standing inside a building in Minneapolis and watching the northerly breezes blow the leaves off the tree outside the door. I congratulated her and her new husband for having the foresight not to plan a wedding outdoors. She told me she had given it some thought, but being a Minnesota native, decided against it. A very smart young woman.

There would be scenes in some bride's heads of a beautiful, crisp October day with brightly colored leaves offering a gorgeous background to a wedding party. The bride in white would stroll to the alter with a background of crimson, gold and yellows as a gentle southerly breeze drifted across the assembled throng awaiting the vows to be spoken. It does sound enticing, doesn't it?

Well, not this year my friends. This year the bride would have been wind-whipped and the groom's carnation would have been frozen as he stood there with a quaking pastor, while the best man fumbled for the rings with frozen fingers.

I'll be sending my notes about my October snowflake ban to my congressmen over the next few weeks. With all the attention being devoted to national health insurance and the wars overseas, it might be just the diversion they need to get it passed.

A guy shouldn't have to spend his October birthday scraping ice off his windshield.

See you next time. Okay?