More on Global Warming

Around seventeen years ago when I moved into this house I spent the back end of the summer laying waste to the garden, which had gone to, well….. waste. I planted all sorts of seeds and plants and stuff, trimmed and tended the better looking stuff which I was assured was not weeds and generally made it presentable. This intense activity wore out my enthusiasm for gardening for several years thereafter and other than mowing the lawn and keeping the trees down to a reasonable height I did little else until last year. That suits me, as it only means a couple of hours graft once every couple of weeks during the summer.


During that early frenzy of horticulture I planted a few Strawberry plants. It was too late for them to fruit that year, but the following year they bore a smattering of delicious red berries during the summer. They then brought forth a further bounty of berries in the late autumn, with the last being picked on the 1st November, which I thought was interesting, but inconsequential. How wrong I was. Global warming was invented. Now some would present a crop of strawberries in November as irrefutable proof of global warming. I however chose to consider it proof of no such thing. This was after all, an immature strawberry plant. It had been a strawberry plant for less than a year; It didn’t know any better. It has of course since learnt that strawberry plants only fruit for a two week period in the middle of June, and it refuses to produce fruit properly even then. It wasn’t as if it was a particularly warm autumn either.

If anything I would attribute the late autumn crop to nothing more than nature doing what it does. It tries new things. If left alone long enough nature will throw up autumn fruiting strawberries eventually, and possibly even frozen strawberries to go with your Christmas dinner. This is not proof of global warming any more than a seven year old boy who sticks his fingers into the electrical socket to see what happens. Seven year old boys, and nature, left unattended for any length of time will get up to all sorts of things, often with sticky or explosive results.

However I am reluctantly going to have to accept that there might be something in this global warming nonsense after all. This time last year I was shovelling 3 foot of snow off the drive to get the car out to go to work. This year it seems we haven’t had a winter at all, just a prolonged Autumn with several false springs in the middle of it. And this means that despite having mowed the lawn twice in November I now have to face the prospect of mowing it again in January. In January for Bob’s sake!

And that leaves me in a quandary. For if the doom-mongers are to be believed global warming is caused by burning petrol and making electricity. I have two lawn mowers. And you’ve guessed it, one is petrol, one is electric. So I either face the wrath of my neighbours, who have started making tutting noises as they walk past my house, an action which is only one step back from a formal petition in a small community like this. Or I cut the lawn. But if I do that I am simply perpetuating the cycle of global warming, using more petrol and more electricity, causing the temperature to rise and the grass to grow quicker, longer and even further into the winter season.

The only socially acceptable option would be to go out there with a pair of scissors.

But can any of the global warming experts explain with honesty, logic, science and facts why last year it was snow, and this year it is grass that is taking up my leisure time?