Killing frost.

Between Thursday evening and Friday morning we got the first frost of the season. The killing frost.

Welp, there went the dahlias.

I planted them in May and we have enjoyed beautiful blooms all summer, into the fall, right up until Thursday evening. Then, wham. All at once. I've never seen such a vivid example of the killing frost in action.

Of course I can't think of killing frost without thinking of 1975's "Wildfire." It was one of those horribly tragic story songs of the sixties and seventies, wherein a story is told and it looks like someone meets a bad end. It could be suicide ("Ode to Billy Joe"), a fugitive caught by the law ("Indiana Wants Me"), needless death in war ("Billy Don't Be a Hero"), hanging of an innocent man ("The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia"), a trapped miner getting eaten by his coworkers ("Timothy"), a crippled veteran abandoned by his wife ("Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town"), miscellaneous death ("Seasons in the Sun"), or procreation of vermin ("Muskrat Love"). All tragic. In the case of "Wildfire," it was the story of the eponymous pony who busted out of his stall and got lost in a blizzard. His female owner ran out into the blizzard after him and I guess they both froze to death.

Oh, they say she died one winter
When there came a killing frost
And the pony she named Wildfire
Busted down its stall
In a blizzard he was lost

Now, this is awfully sad. But I first really became aware of this song when Dave Barry solicited entries for a column, and later a book, of the worst pop songs ever recorded. One of his respondents, Steele Hinton, nominated "Wildfire," noting that a killing frost is only deadly to "flowers and garden vegetables" and "no normal person or pony would freeze as a result of getting lost in the killing frost." And, "Nobody ever got lost in one that wouldn't get lost in July as well."

Barry responded: "This makes sense to me, although I guess the song wouldn't be quite as dramatic if it were about a girl running around desperately calling for her lost tomato, named Wildfire."

I suppose, as Hinton thought, that the meaning of the phrase "killing frost" may have been unclear to those in warmer climates, like Southern California. All they would know was that "frost" rhymes with "lost," and that was the important bit.

I guess I could have saved my flowers from the terrible tragic fate that met Wildfire by protecting them with some fabric, or maybe the grill cover, but it's mid-October and their doom was only a matter of time. I read that you can keep your dahlias over winter by digging up the tubers and keeping them warm inside, but that sounds like work.

Sorry, dahlias. As we say on the ranch, you've gone the way of Wildfire.