The UN report last week saying that humanity has failed to limit global warming to 1.5 C prompted quite a flurry of news reports. But the news should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying even a tiny bit of attention. Ever since the 2015 Climate Accords and the resulting Paris Agreement, no large carbon spewing country has done a damn thing to lower emissions. In fact, global emissions have continued to rise, except for a brief pause during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nonetheless, the UN report says if we all start lowering emissions right now and someone figures out how to magically suck carbon from the atmosphere without burning fossil fuels to do it, then we could limit warming to 1.8 C and begin to bring it back down. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is cancelling renewable energy grants, opening up wilderness areas to gas and oil leasing, and stealing oil from Venezuela. So I am not holding my breath that we will be able to limit planetary warming to 1.8 C. However, I am more than willing to be proved wrong.
This last week in my little corner of the world saw temperatures 15 degrees (fahrenheit) above what currently constitutes normal. Because of shifting baselines, what is normal now is not the same as what was normal 20 years ago which was not the same normal as 20 years before that. Well and so, we’ve got ourselves in quite a bind.
The heat and continued lack of rain has not helped in the drought department either. There were several days that began with a chance of rain, only to, er, dry up. And once again, the forecast is suggesting a good steady rainfall Monday night into Tuesday. I sure hope it happens.
Things are not all doom and gloom. The elderberries are picked and de-stemmed and in spite of all the jamming, there are two large bags in the freezer. Since I finished with the tedious elderberries, I needed some other tedious task and have spent a good many hours cleaning the seeds and tiny hairs out of the inside of rose hips. The hips were abundant this year and I could have picked more than I did, but the work of cleaning them got to be too much. They are currently in a big jar in the freezer until we have time to turn them into syrup which we plan to spice up with a bit of cardamom and ginger.
James has been busy with canning apples—apple butter, apple sauce, apple pie filling. Yesterday though he made a fantastic apple and raspberry pie. So delicious!
And I baked an apple crisp sourdough bread.
A garden surprise happened. Back in early April when I was doing indoor seed starting, I planted a couple pots with cucamelon (also known as mouse melon and sour gherkin). Nothing ever sprouted. When outdoor planting time came, I shoved the remaining seeds into the ground by a trellis. Two weeks later nothing had sprouted, so I planted some additional pole beans. The beans came up within days and I went on my merry way. But then two weeks after that, I noticed some odd little sprouts, could they be? I waited and watched, and sure enough, the cucamelon decided to actually sprout.
But while the sprouts got bigger and got a few more leaves, they didn’t seem like they were going to do anything else. About the middle of July they actually started growing and vining. The leaves and vines were so tiny I thought no way will they amount to anything.
Then last weekend I noticed the vines had fruit! The fruit is about the size of a large marble. They are supposed to taste like a citrousy sour cucumber. Ok, bring it! I popped one into my mouth. Delightfully crunchy! But all I tasted was cucumber, nothing sour, no hint of citrous, just cucumber. Frankly, cucumber is not my favorite flavor to begin with. Pickle a cucumber and I am there for it, but just plain cucumber flavor? Nope.
I told a coworker about them and she wanted to try them, so I took some to her. She loved them and said she even got the sour taste. Hunh. I’m glad she liked them and if I get any more fruit they are hers. But I am disappointed and will not be growing them again.
Something I will be growing again is the green striped cushaw squash. They continue to get bigger and bigger, and the one denting down the top of my trellis arch is probably approaching 15 pounds at this point. I don’t think I’ve ever grown anything so huge and it is much more exciting than the tiny cucamelons! Clearly I am more impressed by large garden vegetables than tiny ones.
The weather has been so wild that I haven’t even been able to use my clothesline more than half a dozen times. First, it was the wildfire smoke. Then it wouldn’t stop raining. Now, it’s so humid that the clothes would just sit out there and stay moist. Also, my lilies aren’t blooming like they used to. It’s very sad all around. As for your little teeny cucumber-flavored balls, have you considered cutting them up with some strawberry or something and putting them in your water? That’s what fancy restaurants do.
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Sadly the weather is only going to get weirder. Next summer is supposed to be even hotter than this one because of the super El Niño and we’re trying to think up ways to keep the garden from getting too hot. I will probably be planting some different varieties than of veg than I usually do. Thankfully even when it’s humid here clothes still dry on the clothesline, just takes a bit longer.
Using the cucuamelons to flavor water is a good idea! Unfortunately I don’t like flavor in my water. Probably one of the few people who don’t 😀
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Thank you for posting about this news, Stefanie. Much appreciated. I have been following the coverage, it’s so important, and consistently trying to take steps in the right direction, regardless of what others are prioritising instead.
My favourite way to eat cucumbers is dipped into tahini/garlic/lemon sauce (or spread not dipped, if I leave it thick like nut butter rather than watered down). It depends on my mood, whether it’s light on the lemon or light on the garlic… and my version of light on the garlic is probably not everyone’s idea about that cuz I love garlic. I think the cucumber itself gets lost in the sauce (sometimes, literally) but I suppose that depends just how much you don’t like the flavour!
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Sadly, the coverage in the news media lasted only hours and most people I know just shrugged. Sigh.
Oh Marcie you and I can be garlic friends forever! I love the stuff and have been known to have so much garlic in my hummus that when James gets home from work he can smell it oozing from my pores 🙂 Your cucumber dish sounds tasty. I picked a couple of lemon cucumbers from the garden over the weekend and they are currently in the fridge pickling along with a few of the mouse melons thrown in. So we will see how those little nuggets taste pickled 🙂
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#GarlicFriends4Evahr That is exactly how one should eat garlic, but we have to be patient with those whose pores are still in training. lol But I also like it with a ridiculous amount of lemon, although I don’t think lemon ever comes out your pores, which is maybe too bad? Is your recent experiment complete? We just finished a two-week batch of pickles, because the CSA had a surprise mountain of tiny cukes, and now it’s beet kvass, because we ordered “extra” beets and that turned out to = 40 pounds. /sideeyeballs Which is probably nothing to you, when you grow your own.
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LOL yaaassss! The pickle experiment is complete but James has been out of town and neither of us has had a chance to try it yet. I’m sure we will contrive something this weekend 🙂
40 pounds of beets?! I love beets. I would 100% pickle them using my grandma’s pickled beet recipe for a taste of my childhood. I don’t actually grow my own beets. They do not like my garden which is extremely disappointing. Chard does pretty well though so at least I can get the greens.
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Those cucamelons are so cute! I’m sorry the taste didn’t live up to hopes. Our tomatoes have been so prolific here that despite freezing and giving away some I am overrun. I like tomatoes but I don’t LOVE them, so next year I’m going to try and grow something I do love: yellow squash.
Thank you for writing about the devastating climate news. We have to face what is happening. I hope you got rain. We have been dry for a few weeks and finally got a nice rain Saturday. Still need more.
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They are cute Laila! We are making refrigerator pickles with lemon cucumbers from the garden and tossed in some of the mouse melons to see how they pickle up. But unless they come out amazing I won’t be growing them again next year. It was a fun experiment though 🙂
Can one have too many tomatoes? 😉 You should definitely grow those yellow squash next year, always grow the things you love!
We do have to face what is happening with the climate, unfortunately the ones who can make the difference are not and continue to make it even worse. But we do what we can in our small ways so we can be as resilient as we can in the face of it.
Today is a cool and rainy day and the garden and I are happy. We still need a lot of rain though. I hope you get some more rain too!
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I saw a map recently showing that central Ohio is one of the few places in the country not in a drought. And boy are we not in a drought–I’ve lived here for more than 30 years and cannot remember a rainier August.
Extreme weather everywhere, and our comatose, geriatric “leaders” are sitting around scheming ways of getting more money.
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I’m glad to hear someone is getting rain, though I hope all the extra you got in August didn’t cause any flooding or other problems.
Sadly our geriatric “leaders are including extreme weather as part of their schemes to get more money. Sigh.
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