A Burgundy diary – 2 February 2022

Is nature getting out of sync as the climate crisis bits

An article in the Guardian today on the climate crisis left me feeling so nearly helpless. One Prof Ulf Büntgen, at Cambridge University, is quoted: ‘When plants flower too early, a late frost can kill them – a phenomenon that most gardeners will have experienced at some point.’ But the even bigger risk is ‘ecological mismatch’, he said, when plants and hibernating or migrating insects, birds and other wildlife are no longer synchronised. ‘That can lead species to collapse if they can’t adapt quickly enough.’ Such mismatches are already being seen, for example, between orchids and bees and great tit chicks and their crucial caterpillar food.

The climate crisis is happening here; and in the countryside you are much more aware of it. Only ten or twelve years ago I can remember coming to Burgundy in the late winter, or early spring. There was often snow here then. In the three years I’ve lived here, there has been a very light fall of snow each winter; and it’s probably gone within a few hours. No snow lies now as it used to lie, for days at a time.

Going back to Prof Büntgen, our orchids have been prolific each May. I only hope they’ll be enough for Lucie’s bees and at the right time. We have a large number of great tits around the house; but will they find sufficient caterpillars for their chicks? Will the synchronicity around the barn here be enough to keep everything in equilibrium as the climate crisis bites.

For bees there is a proliferation of flowers here beyond the orchids in our field; but the late frosts last year killed a lot of the blossom in the fruit trees. We had no cherries where we had a massive crop the year before. The same for quinces; though our cooking pears and a modest amount of black-berries survived in the hedges. For Christmas, there were no holly berries at all on the holly trees in the forest.

The Guadian article spoke of flowers flowering mostly four or five weeks earlier than in 1986 and before. One flower it mentioned is the snow drop. I’ve seen none around here this year.

A Burgundy diary – 24 June 2021

Climate crisis in action: Midsummer Day

It is Midsummer Day and the rain is nearly joined up as it falls steadily from a stolid grey sky. The rain-filled air is windless. From the wide window ahead of me, I cannot see the Morvan hills away to the north-west. Floods will get more frequent; and, round here, serious forest fires – not this year, probably – are inevitable.

I sound Eyoreish? No, just realistic, I believe. I fear for my grand-children. Anyone who is not remarkably stupid – like the awful Mr Trump – can see clear evidence of the crisis. And if they let themselves see. You don’t have to be a member of Green Peace, or hear and understand what David Attenborough is saying, tirelessly, to realise that a nasty future is not very far away, unless we change our lives radically.

If people on this planet go on like this, we – and our grand-children after us – will burn, be burned, or starve in not too many years; or, of course, a handful of the many atom bombs around the world will get us. A grisly end – gradual in flood or fire, or bomb-fed – awaits us. How anyone can fly in an aeroplane (save for matters of life and death; possibly for the essential sake of family) is beyond me. Holiday, and many other flights, flights should be outlawed. A lot of business, we now know, can be conducted on-line; or we can work out how it can be done without air travel.

Till then – today and beneath the rain – the flowers grow, there is green everywhere; and trees and hedges stand greenly in the moist air…

And, yes, its Midsummer Day, one of the quarter days (eg for payment of rent). At law school I learned to remember the quarter days – 25 March, 24 June, 29 September and 25 December. The last is easy, it’s Christmas Day; and for the remaining three, count the letters in the month, and there you are…