ARE WE THERE?

This is a strange winter.  We have just returned from our cold climate garden covered in white after a very un-Mediterranean record breaking December cold and snow in Milwaukee. 
 
Plants are acting odd here in Rome this winter, and Italy has suffered (to say the least) from top to toe with strange violent attacks from Mother Nature.  Rome has had scirocco winds and warm weeks so far this winter.  We read that odd weather patterns are occuring all over the world this year.
 
We returned to Rome, after 6 weeks of absence, to find the 3 potted crotans forgotten on a terrace, still alive and well!  A potted hybiscus is happily putting out new leaves.  Rome had been unusually warm and today only have the temperatures finally dipped into the near freezing zone.
 
What puzzles me are the unusual spurts of bloom...
 
-  'Alberic Barbier' has a few lovely roses in full bloom (NEVER SEEN HERE IN JANUARY)...
 
-  A potted fuschia, only one out of 4 pots on a north facing terrace, was in generous bloom (NEVER    SEEN HERE IN JANUARY)...
 
- Every cheerful hot red pepper plant (seeds from Bangalore, India) that had been sharing space with a row of potted geraniums was still in full swing producing more peppers and I harvested a little basketfull of the bright red ripe ones yesterday (NEVER SEEN HERE IN JANUARY)...
 
- The white paper narcissis bloomed in November this winter, instead of January and a blue flag iris flowered too, months before it should have,
 
- For the 3rd year running we have had completely albino Acanthus mollis seedlings double-dotting the ground with pure white leaves (no stripes or varigated leaflets, but candid white ones) until they run out of nourishment.
 
-Hydrengias have made odd fairy-godmother-like wands with tightly clustered pompoms of flowers on the tips of winter-bare canes (NEVER SEEN HERE IN JANUARY)...
 
Have our natural cycles been altered?  Are we really feeling the effects of the increase of carbon dioxide, methane and other gasses in our polluted atmosphere?  What are the chlorofluorocarbons continuing to do to our earth's ozone layers?  Acidic rain is unavoidable.  Europe, including areas of the French and Italian Alps, is still is poisioned in places with nuclear fallout from the Cernobyl accident, and will be so for hundreds of years. 
 
Are our gardens showing strange behavior and odd changes because of our 'progress'?
 
Have we arrived at a point of no return?  Is Global Warming changing our weather patterns?  We certainly have gotten ourselves into a mess in the past 50 years, and looking at our small Mediterranean garden with the odd growth this winter, I wonder ... are  we there????
 
From a perplexed, but hopeful,
           Helene Pizzi
           Rome, Italy   
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index