To serve and protect

Personally, I did not need the EPA’s report that climate change is here, and clearly, things will only to get worst if we do nothing. I cannot wait for the powers-to-be face deal with the fact that we are stressing our planet. I write my representatives, letting them know I do believe that we need to change before we find ourselves in a corner we cannot escape.

In the meanwhile, I make the changes I can. Our house generates but a bag of trash that cannot be recycled, composted or repurposed about every 10 days. And of course, I will run the dishwasher only when filled to over-maximum capacity and all the bulbs are LED. I am no only in an area that offers any kind of mass transit and try to bundle my errands. Then course, as I have been for years, I cook and eat foods that come from my immediately area – to the point where I could be considered militant. From this time of year into the first frosts I am working/eating with about 90% local foods. And, yes I am fortunate that much comes from my yard. Dream as I might not everything comes out of my yard: around me are strawberry fields and peach orchards allowing me to gather these beloved seasonal icons from just down the road. Strangely, right now, the impact of climate change has been a bonanza for this year’s strawberry crop – just enough rain in early spring with a sharp right turn into summer heat. Be warned though, they are also heavily sprayed, and I will only buy organic ones. Hot and dry those berries have ripened into sweet, deep-ruby red two-bite pleasures.  I have not has a strawberry in almost a year, and last year’s harvest offered just the opposite in satisfaction. Tossed with some chopped spearmint, and we are having sweet tooth seasonal satisfaction.

 I wonder how many more seasons I have I enjoy this splatter of crimson during an otherwise period of green, or when the day will come when the well that waters my garden runs dry?