Next spring, I plan to plant olive and pistachio trees in my yard.Never mind that I live in Zone 7 Alabama, USA and not Tuscany. Thanks go global warming I can say goodbye forever to boring apples and peacans and “Buon Giorno!” to Mediterranean species! Hallelujah that hole in the ozone…. :: ahem ::
Our poor, old apple tree produced exactly three fruits this year, which the squirrels promptly harvested, took one bite from, and then threw to the ground for the dogs to play with.
And the blueberry bushes? Despite our best attempts at clandestine watering we did not harvest a single berry – the fruit shriveled and bushes burned. I doubt they’ll bounce back in the spring, and the venerable Farmers Almanac agrees with me. It is predicting higher temperatures and more wide-spread drought for the summer of 2008.
So rather than fight a menopausal Mother Nature I am going to ride out her hot flashes by planting tropical fruit-bearing trees and shrubs. The Hubster and I love Mediterranean cuisine, so why not?
Hell, we could be on the cutting edge of a new trend in the South. Five years from now all of our corn farmers may instead be tending to olive groves – wouldn’t that be fabulous? Newly planted trees offset carbon emissions, stabilize soil erosion, and could produce lovely locally-pressed oil.
Yes, global warming sucks. Yes, my heart absolutely breaks when I consider the future of polar bears….oh, and Eskimos, right. But the best I can do, besides cutting back on energy consumption wherever possible, is to stop fighting the local climate and start working with it.
Of course, this will wreak havoc on local allergy sufferers, but compared to the problems of polar bears I don’t think they have much to complain about.
Our poor, old apple tree produced exactly three fruits this year, which the squirrels promptly harvested, took one bite from, and then threw to the ground for the dogs to play with.
And the blueberry bushes? Despite our best attempts at clandestine watering we did not harvest a single berry – the fruit shriveled and bushes burned. I doubt they’ll bounce back in the spring, and the venerable Farmers Almanac agrees with me. It is predicting higher temperatures and more wide-spread drought for the summer of 2008.
So rather than fight a menopausal Mother Nature I am going to ride out her hot flashes by planting tropical fruit-bearing trees and shrubs. The Hubster and I love Mediterranean cuisine, so why not?
Hell, we could be on the cutting edge of a new trend in the South. Five years from now all of our corn farmers may instead be tending to olive groves – wouldn’t that be fabulous? Newly planted trees offset carbon emissions, stabilize soil erosion, and could produce lovely locally-pressed oil.
Yes, global warming sucks. Yes, my heart absolutely breaks when I consider the future of polar bears….oh, and Eskimos, right. But the best I can do, besides cutting back on energy consumption wherever possible, is to stop fighting the local climate and start working with it.
Of course, this will wreak havoc on local allergy sufferers, but compared to the problems of polar bears I don’t think they have much to complain about.
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