So, tonight we're going to experience the first freeze of the season. Wait a minute...wasn't it just last weekend that temperatures were in the seventies,and we were all saying how weird this weather was for the end of October in Oregon? Now, they're talking about record lows in the next two days. This is definitely NOT usual for this time of year...or for Oregon at all, for that matter. We don't DO extreme temperature swings like this. I begin to wonder if global climate change isn't a much more dangerous and immediate problem than we have all been wanting to admit.
I packed all the container plants I cared about into my little $200 portable greenhouse this evening when I got home from work. (Work? Oh, yeah, that's a story for another entry.) I hope they're all safely bedded down for the winter, and that I'll have some success bringing them out of hibernation next spring.
But there are the other plants--the annuals in the beds in front of the house, that I know are doomed. I will go out tomorrow morning and they will be piles of green mush...massacred by the frost. I thought of pulling them out of the beds today, before they died, but I couldn't. I felt that they deserved to die in dignity with their "roots" on. Outside with the dog this evening, I had the oddest feeling. I could almost HEAR them dying. I felt such sadness. Not for the end of the summer or the coming of the cold weather, but for the plants themselves. They have such a brief life, that is so much dictated by things beyond their control. Yes... it's nature. It is The Order of Things. But it's still sad.
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