It's been unseasonably warm here lately; we don't have a temperature gauge outside, but inside today the thermostat said it was 83 so it must have been 90 or so in the sun. I love the heat, since it softens some of the muscle cramps I get, but this long summer may not be a good thing. The trees are dropping leaves without turning color, which may be usual here, I guess, though I don't really think so. What isn't usual is the green sprouting plants coming up in the garden that got mulched for winter.


It's a bit hard to see, but in the below picture, the leaves with multiple lobes are sprouting off the base of a plant that got cut off to the roots, as though it's spring and time for new growth. I suppose this won't really hurt anything as far as the plant's ability to grow back again next spring- which is silly to worry about if I'm just going to turn it into a vegetable patch anyway- but it all seems very odd and out of sync. I hope this crazy summer doesn't turn into a ridiculously long and cold winter.

It's my understanding that global warming is expected to lead not to slightly warmer temperatures year round and nothing else, but rather to greater fluctuations in weather, which would include hotter summers and colder winters and more storms. I don't know how I'm going to deal with colder winters, but I think it would be great if warmer weather combined with rising heating and cooling costs lead to great swathes of people adopting the midday siesta as a way of life. Temperature efficient architecture and sleeping during the day sound like improvements to me.