I need to say a word or two about the weather. There are far more learned scientists who could discuss the current weather patterns with greater empirical certainty than I can; meaning they conduct experiments and gather long-term data that they can rely on for evidence. So just call this the ramblings of one Midwestern gardener.
Big sis, Christine, holds me on a sled in early December, 1959.
Photo Credit: Joan V. Miller (now Joan V. Imdorf)
The mums were still flowering in December, 2006.
Photo Credit: Mark A. Miller
Didn’t break out the sled this year…
Photo Credit: Mark A. Miller
My line of thinking arose from the need to title another piece I’ve been working on about creating a bed at my new house in central Ohio, but I wasn’t sure whether to call it a “late fall bed installation” or an “early winter bed installation.” Bear with me for a minute while I tumble into the clichéd stories of chest-high snowdrifts that I had to walk through as a child to get to school…
It was colder and snowier when I was growing up in northeast Ohio. And yes, I did walk to elementary school – but it was just up the street, about eight or so houses away. I was able to come home for lunch in the early years, before a tragic accident with another youngster necessitated all of the neighborhood kids piling on a bus and riding around for 45 minutes to get to a school that was within a five-minute walk.
But I digress.
We built snow forts and igloos and skated on Pleasant Acres Lake across the street. I remember many walks through Somers’ Woods, seeing very little peeking up through the snow except fallen beech branches or a few ratty-looking ferns. We went sled riding on Fochs’ Hill and got mighty cold over long hours of fun. You could always count on a white Thanksgiving, let alone a white Christmas. The first snow usually arrived just on the coattails of a blustery Halloween. My father and I always seemed to put up the Christmas decorations in the snow. Our almost acre-long driveway had to be shoveled, and that became the bane of my existence when I was in high school. The year of my 18th birthday, in February, my folks were on an extended Caribbean cruise and I had to shovel out driveway drifts easily 2-3 feet high.
So what’s with the current weather? Or should I say, what’s with the climate?
As an environmental educator, I know I must couch this discussion in different terms. There are many more variations on the current weather patterns and ramifications beyond just my ability to plant Zone 6 plants in my garden in the middle of December. The biggest differences between weather and climate, in very simple terms, are scale and time. Weather is more localized and part of shorter natural cycles. Climate is on a much larger scale (worldwide, for example) and part of longer cycles.
My personal take on what’s happening out there lately is accelerated global climate change. The people in Melbourne, Australia, including my daughter and her mother, are having quite a cool summer at the moment. Friends in New Zealand and California can’t remember when it’s been so chilly. Poor long-suffering pals in Durango, CO, are still digging themselves out. Other friends living near London, England, had a tornado to contend with recently. And some of our Learn2Grow family members in Missouri and Oklahoma are experiencing deadly ice storms at the moment.
Adrian Higgins, The Washington Post garden writer, recently crafted a wonderful piece about the weather patterns that residents are experiencing in and outside of the Beltway. He pointed out that there will be garden winners and losers – the ability to grow those once-tender Zone 7 and 8 plants that we gardeners drool over, and the inability to sustain plants that require cooler summer temperatures. Having lived in Washington myself for a number of years, I know how incredibly hot and muggy it can get.
Like most people my age, I’m not complaining about warmer winters here in Ohio, but I do worry about my daughter’s generation and her children. I believe in global warming. I’m not being alarmist, but rather choose to see myself as a realist. The weather is different now. The question I ask myself is: Are the current weather patterns evidence of a long-term cycle of global climate change? I think the answer is yes, they are.
So what am I doing about it? What can I do about it? Well, I employ the principles of reduce, recycle, reuse and repurpose (and re-gift – oh yes, I’m a big re-gifter). Working from home now has greatly reduced use of my fuel-efficient car. I’m planning a big garden so I can grow my own food organically and know that it didn’t have to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to get to me. I’ve asked Learn2Grow contributing writer Melinda “Food Sleuth®” Hemmelgarn to teach me the vanishing arts of canning and food storage. I have a homemade compost bin, and consequently find that I only have to put the garbage can out on the curb every other week – or even three weeks apart.
But the biggest action I’m taking is putting my passion, my energy and my time into promoting children’s gardening. Connecting kids to plants, nature, their environments and the Earth as a whole is incredibly important – and needed – in our culture. Our children and their children are the ones who will have to live with the consequences of our actions.
