This cold snap on the eastern seaboard of the US is not a snap, it’s practically a season. It’s been going on for a month. It is also not just on the eastern seaboard. It starts higher than that and ends lower. It’s also wider.
I’ve just returned from a work trip to Nicaragua, where, for the entire three weeks I was there, the “snap” brought average temperatures down by at least 10 degrees. But at this time of the year, temperatures usually fluctuate in the 80s and 90s – which meant the weather was still near-perfect at Rancho Santana throughout my entire stay.
I was, however, worried about the effect the near-freezing nights in South Florida would have on the thousands of plants and trees in Paradise Palms, our botanical garden. I’ve put so much time and money into the garden over the years that its value, at least to me, is greater than the value of my beachfront home.
It’s amusing to realize that I’ve spent most of my life never giving a second thought to the weather. As a child, I yearned for it to snow enough to close my school. As an adult, I occasionally wondered about how the lack of snow would affect my skiing. And there was always the occasional hurricane to be faced in Florida. But those were rare events and could be insured against. You can’t insure yourself against damage to very rare and valuable trees that could be chilled to death.
Since returning, I’ve been wearing a jacket every day and even a jacket and sweater while walking the dog at night. Today, I’m wearing a tee shirt. It’s a bit cold for a tee shirt, but I’m doing what I can to signal to Mother Nature that enough is enough.
Speaking of cold (cough, cough), I was following all the craziness surrounding the ICE protests in Minnesota. And although I think the deaths of the two protesters were not murders, I do think that they might have been avoided if Trump and his team had listened to my advice… which is the main subject of today’s issue.
