The bees are bringing in yellow pollen, white pollen and red pollen. All I've ever seen them bring into the hive was red pollen this time of year...and I truthfully don't know what kind of pollen that is, unless some narcissistic Red Maple thinks Mother Nature has picked it to be special.
The Chick Weed has been growing all winter, and the Bee balm hasn't been killed back. The garlic is growing steadily and I'm wondering what the warm will do to the harvest dates. I planted multiplier onions in late October, and have been eating them for more than a month.
Let me guess, it's climate change, global warming, inconvenient truth, carbon dioxide, Repent, the Mayan Calendar is expiring. What else can we blame the weather on? I'm sure I've forgotten to mention hundreds of theories, and experts, that would like to have their names and theories mentioned in this blog.
My mind tells me this is a great winter. Little, or no cold, near normal rain, and no snow. My inner self tells me that I'd better cover my back...something ain't right. Funny how anomalies play with one's psyche. All this is perfectly normal? Next year it could start snowing in November? Are we gonna' get hit with a Winter with No Summer come Feb?
The fabled year of "Winter With No Summer" occurred in year1815, 16. That occurrence was apparently precipitated by a volcanic eruptions in Indonesia, and elsewhere. Solar inactivity was also blamed. The former is a given, the later up for discussion. The event saw people and livestock freeze to death in the New England States in June. Lakes and rivers were frozen into July and August in Pa. Migratory birds died by the thousands The ensuing famine caused a great migration from Europe to the US. A high temperature of 46 degrees on the 4th of July in Savannah, Georgia putting a shiver in the celebration.
I do remember "pulling fodder" an older black gentleman in the mid 50's, and him telling about it snowing as he "hilled" corn with his mule in late May. Friend Billy Cornette says he's seen snow in every month but July in the years he's lived in Hillsville, Va.
Anomalies can be written off as "seasonal variations", but the record high temps and droughts, hurricane intensity and floods we are enduring are quickly taking a toll on the world in general. Something ain't right, and the historical data needs to be adjusted. A good source for hysterical weather data is Weather Underground. I use this site because it uses up to the minute local weather stations to tell what going on, and has free historical data for major cities for the past whatever, longer than I've been alive, anyway.
I simply believe that we are contributing to the increase in worldwide climate anomalies with the insertion of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. I don't have any idea we caused this general warming, as we don't have anything but a fossilized record, ice cores, and the like, to project what the climate may have been 100,000 years ago. Naysayers purport reading this record with the knowledge we have gained over the past few hundred years is not definitive enough to blame our intervention as significant. I think we have to take some of the "heat" for the significant and rapid rise in world temperatures, and weather system changes.
There is not enough evidence to convince anyone in a position of power to take time out from making money to look at the cold hard facts. Some countries are getting on board a carbon cap...not the US, or China. These industrial giants might take a miniscule economic hit...something they do not want to even think about.
I really think the major industrial powers hope the polar icecap melts. They can then make more widgets, and sell cheaper all over the world. Widgets shipped via the Northwest Passage, in ships so big the stern leaves New York City as the bow reaches Alaska! We don't need no stinking Panama Canal! Fill it in, and plant bananas...we now have an ice free Polar route.
I was looking at my carbon footprint the other day. The biggest contributor, in my mind, is the wood firing of the pottery. That effort requires 7 to 9 hours of steady feeding wood to the fireboxes, and lots of black smoke. I mentioned this to someone who said that didn't count as much because the fuel I was renewable. Granted, it is discarded wood from a pallet re-manufacturing plant, but it still puts a hell of a lot of carbon up the chimney...plus I got two wood stoves to feed all winter.
Guess I'll just have to keep the uneasy feeling about this winter, and brace for a hot summer, starting early. Burn some more fossil fuel in the Chevy, and drag our old Eddy camper to someplace cool, instead of running the AC. Damn, there just aren't many alternative choices, are there?
One thing for sure, I don't want anymore Northerners coming down here to steal our warms...unless they go back north for the summers, no staying to become damn Yankees, unless they move to Florida...the North Georgia mountains are full, ya'll.
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