As I write we’re experiencing our first snow fall of the year, which also happens to be our first snowstorm. I’m a weather denier as a habit. This is not the same as a climate change denier. People who refuse to accept the evidence for anthropogenic climate change generally worry about damage to their pocketbook and lifestyle. They feel that as long as they deny carbon pollution is leading to a dramatic change in climate, they’ll be able to continue driving from their McMansions a few hundred yards to the store to buy takeout in disposable cartons, rather than walking.
My habit of denying big weather events probably stems from a similar place: I don’t want to change my plans or habits. In the case of snowstorms I often have to stare down long stretches of time monitoring bouncy children. Sure they spend a lot of time sledding, but they also spend a lot of time indoors interfering with my ability to work/play.
I also feel like the news media tends to suggest that every weather event will lead to chaos and a run on the supermarkets. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: the mere suggestion leads to chaos and a run on the supermarkets regardless of the actual outcome. Most of our weather is really just normal New England weather. You know what they say: if you don’t like the weather, move back to Florida squeaky.
Weather does have a dramatic effect on my gardening so I monitor it carefully. Too hot, too cold, too much rain all suggest things I should do for my plants. Rain can also make a bike ride to work much less pleasant, so I tend to keep an eye on the radar. But, unlike nearly all other areas of my life, I tend to be optimistic about weather.
This year I got burned on the Brussels sprouts (hereafter, BS). As I wrote back in September, I planted my BS in July after the garlic came out. I had seeded them indoors under lights in June, so they were pretty small. Most BS takes about 110-120 days to mature from transplant. That’s 4 good months. Technically, my BS had plenty of time, but I suspect that as the days got shorter in September and October growth slowed to a crawl.
The BS still looked great, they were tall and my caterpillar control efforts had been largely successful, but there were at most just little pea sized sprouts: very unsatisfying.
BS is frost tolerant and can easily deal with temperatures down in the twenties, so usually they make it well into November. This year they did well and continued to look happy until we had a few nights in the low teens. Even hardy BS can’t stand this sort of temperature and they turned into weepy soft piles of leaves. Sadly, the weather quickly turned warm again. If I’d been careful I could have thrown a blanket over my BS and it would have been fine. Instead, the chickens are eating them.
At least the weather’s not as bad as what my cat just experienced. A boarder snuck up on her with a bowl full of plastic ninjas. He leaned over her saying “cloudy with a chance of ninjas,” and dumped them over her head. I sure love snow days.
