Well, it’s official: Google’s Doodle announced the first day of fall Tuesday. With fall’s arrival came our first frost advisory, too. I guess there’s no denying it anymore. Goodbye summer. Hello Fall.
Of course, the end of summer is inevitable. It is as certain as day will change to night. Yet every year I find myself denying it. Nope, summer’s not over yet, and some years it’s easier than others to do so. This September though, the cool temperatures have made it hard.
I must admit that I am a serial denier. In addition to the change of seasons, rain is a common subject of denial for me. It can be ninety percent chance of rain, and I will insist it will not rain. Don’t need my umbrella. Nope.
Then there’s the “it’s not time yet” denial, when getting up for work. This seems to be a denial I share with many, many people. Why else would there be a need for the snooze alarm? Age is another thing I deny, despite the name of this column. And as some people can attest to, I quite often deny the need to fill up with gas.
As a gardener, denial is risky. Not wanting to admit that fall is approaching is one thing, but denying that Emerald Ash Borer is going to take out your ash tree can be fatal to your ash tree. If that ash tree is just one of many trees in your landscape, its loss may not be felt. If that ash tree is a grand old specimen, the loss will affect the entire landscape.
The United Nations Climate Summit is this week, and there’s a lot of denial when it comes to that subject. It’s a risky denial though, because it’s not just about a tree or even a landscape. It’s about a planet, and how ironic is it that one of NASA’s space probes just reached an orbit around Mars Sunday night looking for clues as to why that planet went from wet and moist billions of years ago to the wind-swept and forlorn landscape it is today.
Climate change is easy to deny though, and I must plead guilty to it in a way. Last winter was the coldest winter in thirty years, and tulips actually lasted until Mother’s Day this year at Kingwood Center. That’s something that hasn’t happened in a long time. Add to that a summer that was the coolest one for as long as I can remember, and any reasonable person has to wonder.
I was brought up to believe in both God and science. I was taught that it was God who created us, and it was God who created the world in which we live. It was science who taught me how truly miraculous that was, and every day I spend in the garden I am reminded of that miracle. So when a majority of scientists from around the world say that our actions are affecting the climate, and not in a good way, any reasonable person has to wonder.
Unfortunately, reason seems to have left our leaders, and the fact that we wait for a crisis to occur before we react to it is nothing new. My brother long ago called it the “TP Syndrome,” because we don’t really think about how much toilet paper we use until the roll is nearly empty. So will our leaders this week realize that our roll is getting near the end? I can only hope and pray that they do.
