Was it three or four years ago that the drought first dried up the creek? It was the summer that the okra blossoms burned up and dropped off, when my harvest was nothing but peppers and eggplant. I don’t like eggplant. Last summer, it was cool here, but blistering in Seattle. This year, I let the garden go. I planted and watered, but I didn’t weed. Volunteers took up whole patches. The bees, the birds, and the butterflies loved the lemon balm, the four-feet-tall marigolds, chickweed and Malabar spinach. I got a few potatoes, some early tomatoes, but then the petunias and the tomatoes burned up. I made note of what survived–vincas, cannas, those peppers again. There was still color, still food for the frogs and rabbits that moved into the garden. In the face of uncertainty, I’ll call that success.

My senator knows
Earth is not getting warmer.
His proof? A snowball.