A couple of months ago I did all the usual yard prep one does before cold weather starts in: trimming back the delicate lantana, mint, pennyroyal, bee balm, and some little flowering plant who’s name I always forget. Then I get many bags of mulch and cover everyone in a nice toasty blanket of snuggleness to keep them warm till next spring.

Well, that didn’t go quite as planned. It’s been so warm that the poor plants are all confused and decided to stick their little heads above the mulch layer. The green little niblets are coreopsis (i think) and you all know the gerbera daisy. Look how happy they are! I hope they know that they are doing.

It’s been a strange weather season here coastal NC. Our summer, although hot and muggy, wasn’t it’s usual. For one, we didn’t get near enough rain. Usually some summer storm comes up, a minor hurricane or tropical storm, to dowse us down and keep things green. Not so this year. In fact, as of a couple of days ago we are down two feet in precipitation. On one hand it’s good because we didn’t have our usual swarm of skeeters, but bad because the agriculture around here suffered, as did my lawn and flower beds. We were even on a water restriction from the county and city. Times they are a changin’.

To add insult to injury we’ve had 75 degree days all through most of October, November and December. That makes it hard to get into the spirit of Halloween when you’re hot in your costume. And even harder to enjoy a good Thanksgiving meal because the house is so hot from all the cooking. I certainly had a hard time putting out the yard ornaments for Christmas because of the heat. I feel like Heat Miser is in town and ruining my holiday season!

It never really gets cold here but it does cool off and we have fallish weather. So imagine my surprise at being woken up this morning at 3 by whipping wind and pelting rain. Yay! Or so I thought. Then I walked out of the house and it was frickin’ 35 degrees! Hey! It was just 65 yesterday and 73 the day before. Where’s the gradual transition? Jiminy. I’m all for the chill but dang, ease me into it!

This wacky weather makes me think about all the hooha surrounding global warming. I haven’t seen Al’s movie yet but it’s on the Netflix queue. I do believe there is global warming because of humanity’s bad stewardship of the resources of our fine planet. And I also believe in the theory that the earth warms and cools in a cyclical patterns as espoused by this guy. Us humans have just cranked up that cycle a bit with all our fossil fuel use among other things.

Nonetheless, my little gerberas better come back in the spring or I’ll write a strongly worded letter to the UN or Mr. Bush or some body important. Maybe even Al himself!

OK – I have to go drive around in my fossil fuel using auto buying unnecessary Christmas gifts for people who already have too much material goods so that we can open something on Christmas day and contribute to the 25% increase in waste for a single day.

Merry Christmas!