Yesterday, it was ninety in the shade, “breaking the old record of 85 set in 1985” as an AP article put it. One day of heat, of course, doesn’t signify anything, but there is no denying that everything about this spring has been warm and early. Winter ended the last of February, and now, the end of May, it pretty much feels like summer. On the one hand, I know this is not good. On the other hand, I have to admit I like the heat. Hot weather does not faze me, and when you combine this with my passion for fruit, you certainly could be pardoned for wondering why I live in Maine. Sometimes I wonder why, too. What can I say? I guess I love Maine more than I love year-round hot weather and a wide variety of fresh fruit. 

Therefore, even though it was blazingly hot, I worked in my gardens, pulling weeds, watering, and setting out some of my garden ornaments. I just love this kind of puttering. I did wait until late afternoon, when the sun had left our shady yard, to plant seedlings. For the most part, this is a fern, hosta, and lily kind of yard, but I do have one spot that gets the minimum amount of sun necessary for herbs and some vegetables. In that spot I planted cucumbers, which do surprisingly well; Juliet tomato seedlings, a variety that can actually tolerate a bit of shade; broccoli, zucchini, basil, rosemary, and sage. 

I spent midafternoon under the umbrella at the big table on the patio. I ate my lunch and brought out my little portable radio so that I could listen to the writer and environmentalist Bill McKibben speak on It’s Your World, a show on National Public Radio. As the heat completely enveloped me, Bill McKibben’s message seemed very timely—because of our reckless use of fossil fuels, we humans are spewing so much carbon into the atmosphere that the world will soon be a very different place from the one we have known for thousands of years, a planet whose overall climate has been hospitable to a multitude of species, including our own. McKibben asserted that this hospitable, nurturing climate will quickly become a thing of the past and that we will be living on “an uphill planet” rather than the “flat world” described by the writer Tom Friedman. (In fairness, although McKibben didn’t do so, it must be noted that Friedman is a huge proponent of green energy, and the environment is one of his major concerns.) In the face of the challenges brought about by climate change, McKibben advocated that national and world goals should be “resilience, stability, and security.” 

The only glimmer of hope McKibben had to offer was the resurgence of small farms and local food, both of which are making huge gains in our country. No longer just for a small, select group of people, local food has become popular with families with modest incomes as well as for affluent families, and many vendors are now accepting food stamps (now known as SNAP).  

McKibben has written a new book called eearth: Making A Life On A Tough New Planet. I think the subtitle pretty much describes the tone of the book, as well as the talk he gave on It’s Your World.

I will soon be ordering eearth from Apple Valley Books, a local bookshop. It won’t be cheery reading, by any means, but the message couldn’t be more important. Somehow, some way, we have to find less destructive ways of living.