Why I worry about blossom on trees

It is the begining of March. And at the end of my garden are two wild mirabelle plum trees, one that produces tiny yellow fruit and one that has red. We make jam and sometimes I bottle them in the old fashioned way that my parents did. The blossom is white, and early. So early that all week I have worried that the frost and snow and heavy storms of this week will kill the blossom and we will lose the fruit.

Where I grew up as a teenager in Central Otago, New Zealand , there was many acres of fruit trees - plums, greengages, and apples, but even more cherries, peaches, nectarines and above all many varieties of apricots which thrived in the hot summers. But the winters were severely cold and frosty, and the orchardists protected the fragile blossom by burning pots of oil under the branches – a messy system that required alarms to awaken the family to refill the frost pots during the long night. Nowadays a system of pumped water sprays are automated to sprinkle the trees and freeze a glassy shell over the blossom and buds at the exact 1 degree Celsius that would prevent any further damage to the fruiting of the tree. Environmentally more friendly to the air, but the water is available due to the flooding of the river valley for a dam and irrigation systems in a very dry region.

The resources of my East Anglian garden can offer no such protection to my potential plum crop this year. So I can only hope that the snow comes before the frost and allows the buds to be protected under a white blanket. What makes me worry about natural things that cannot be altered like this ?