indices of climate change in my back yard

the epa has published a list of forty-five indices of climate change..some of them such as carbon dioxide emissions i cannot measure ( even though i know my activities emit them )...the level of arctic and antarctic sea and land ice...or glacial melt...there are a few i can monitor in the relative comfort of my back yard or house however...heating and cool degree days is one...the call sixty five degrees fahrenheit the dividing line between heating and cooling days...this seems unrealistic to me..at sixty-five degrees i would have the windows open and the heat-a/c system would be off...still i can monitor how many days the heat and a/c run and what temperatures they are set at...high and low temperatures is another and that would be a natural to go with heating and cooling days...i have a rain gauge so heavy precipitation events ( we have been exceeding the annual average rainfall here for some time ) and drought would be simple indicators to keep track of as well...

my yard is replete with trees..deciduous and fir...( somewhat of a mitigation to my emissions...the perennials are carbon sinks too )...

as well as vegetables and flowers that all leaf and bloom ( the locust trees bloom and when the seeds fall it looks a lot like snow ) cyclically throughout the season so the first leaf and bloom dates should be simple to track over the seasons...the epa says we are running four to eight days earlier than the first leaf and bloom days were in 1950..a multi-year project for my dotage...

i have recently taken sophie d. coe to task over her statements about teocintli being unable to mature and set seed in northern latitudes...it is doing so successfully in my back yard...

both the seeds and the berries i am finding in my yard in november are there because the growing season is getting longer...the first frost is coming later and plants with longer seasons have the time to do what they do...in my yard and all over...

and i am finding one that is not on the epa's list...this is carolina horse nettle at the community garden on campus...it is not native and the garden is well north of its native range...it still is robust, blooming, and reproducing where it does not belong...an invader from a different climate that is in a new home not so different that it cannot survive...i know the climate is changing...i can see it empirically...i have me beliefs about why it is changing even though i cannot prove them to anyone's satisfaction...especially the deniers...that is understandable given human nature..it doesn't change fact.

polar vortex? whatever you call i it is cold.

at least the snow in the rye bed...

and the wheat bed...

reached a sufficient depth before the cold arrived...we may be in fair shape this season if this holds...certainly the snow is not going anywhere today.

expansion

it is a snowy day out there today and beyond shoveling, checking snow depth in the beds, and maybe photographing stumpy there won't be much going on out there...things have moved along indoors however...

a garlic bulb in the kitchen is either way ahead of schedule or knows something about spring i do not...

it was intended mostly for culinary purposed but i scarpered off with the clove that was farthest along...

refilled the peat pot i removed the spud from yesterday and planted him under the lights...and how is the spud?

doing fine...no signs of root shock...green..robust...and there is a new kid in town to get to know...and the season i had hoped to keep somewhat simple just got that much more complex.

january twenty-seventh outside and in

stumpy, the ex-locust tree, tells me there has been more snow overnight..

and so do the fir trees which were snow-less yesterday...and i am in favor of snow even with the navigational impediments it delivers...

because cold has settled in for something of a stay ( more there in a bit )...

the good news is there is no more green showing in the winter rye bed and there is 5.125 inches of snow cover...

and there is minimal green in the wheat bed because of the 5.25 inches of cover there...so snow is good...the forecast says so...

it has its twists and turns...no doubt about that....i suppose there have been fifty-five degree ( fahrenheit ) temperature swings over five day periods before...still...unsettled seems a good term...

what happens outside is clearly our of my control...inside i have the ability ( and responsibility) to intervene in the lives of plants i am responsible for and this spud was ion the verge of outgrowing the peat pot i was in..it was time for a move...

so i drilled some drainage holes in an old five gallon bucket, being sure to knock down the burrs it left in side so the water would actually drain...

i did not knock the soil off the roots when i removed the plant but you can see the roots are a shade longer than the plant is tall..the had pretty much found the bottom of the peat pot...

i planted it about two thirds of the way down the bucket so i can back fill as the plant grows to stimulate tuber growth...experience tells me not to expect much in terms of size...probably just a few drops i can plant outside in spring...that will be good enough for an indoor winter season in completely unnatural conditions...i set the bucket on another upturned one under the lights by the mashua..which is doing well itself...

puddles' kids look a lot like mom did right about this time of the basement season...leggy and falling over...still..they and the onions are green and i do believe they will be around for the outdoor rejuvenation their mom saw come april...

and over in the opposite corner the cohabiting yacon and mashua are looking robust as well...the basement season has expanded a bit but is still under control...iot that far to spring even though a casual stroll outside might convince you otherwise.

microclimates and snow?

the internet says it is seventeen degrees ( fahrenheit ) here...my thermometer disagrees and has an ambient air temperature that is seven degrees warmer...microclimate? either way it is well below freezing and the snow cover has stabilized with an icy crust after two days of above or near freezing temperatures and rain...

there is considerably more green showing in the rye bed...

the green is showing because the rains of the past two days have pockmarked the surface and erased 1.9375 inches of snow from the bed's surface...

there has always been green showing in the wheat bed...

the surface of the wheat bed is also pockmarked but not nearly as deeply as the rye bed and it has only lost 1 inch of snow cover...i am assuming the ambient air temperature was nearly the same for both since they abut one another, so how to account for the difference...

i am uncertain...the beds are set back in the yard by a pair of locust trees and the one by the wheat bed is a few feet closet than the one that is near the rye bed...so its branches overhang the wheat bed more fully than the one by the rye ( and shade the bed more after they leaf...fortunately later in spring ) and so may have deflected more of the rain from the wheat bed than the rye...grasping at straws? probably...still there was an uneven amount of snow loss over the surface of two beds located next to one another and i am human so i need an explanation.

how's the weather?

well...i have seen better...the temperature is hanging right around freezing...a touch above perhaps...the deck in front of my house is icy...but the roads are not...probably because they are salted to an evil extent ( the sides of my truck tell me so )...and the temperature has had an impact on the snow pack on my overwintering beds...

there wasn't much green showing in the rye bed yesterday and there isn't much today either despite the fact that it has lost .9375 of an inch of snow cover since yesterday...

there was always green showing in the wheat bed and there is a bit more today because, in an unexpected bit of symmetry given the micro climates i discover in my yard, it to has lost .9375 of an inch of snow...there must be a consistency of temperature out there today...so we still have the requisite four inches of cover on both beds...hoping it holds...

the winds of the past few days have left a considerable number of teocintli seeds undisturbed...there are still multiple ears that are unopened and intact...the seed must be of suspect viability...i imagine the late emerging ears which were stilol green at the first hard frost are what is left...

the egyptian walking onions are looking a bit battered by recent events...they are also still defiantly green...i will be interested to see what the areal bulbs have been up to while under cover...

finally...a photo of deep river in winter...this was yesterday...sunny...with a very cold wind.