more snow? where's the global warming when you need it?

8:48 a.m. february 2, 2010

 3:06 p.m. february 2, 2010
difficult to see how much snow is actually coming down, but it's a lot.

another snowstorm is moving in. or should i say, it has moved in. and that actually fits quite nicely with my mood. one moment the world (and the blogosphere) seems like a sunny, nice place to be and the next, wham, you're broadsided by a flurry of a storm you didn't see coming. the weather, all nice and polite and happy and pleasant turns rude and unpleasant. it's really quite disappointing and frankly, i could use some spring.

my weaving class is canceled for this evening. but i've laid in a supply of chai and firewood, so we'll be fine. i've also got a dozen clarity birds to work on:

and if that's not enough to do, we've got a 3000-piece puzzle going as well:

you can see that it should keep us busy for awhile.

COP15 begins today

the COP15 meeting on climate change begins today in copenhagen.  the danish parliament hurried through legislation enabling a big crackdown by the police on protesters. there's a holding area complete with cages for 350 set up in the old brewery not far from the center of copenhagen. and denmark has been granted permission by the european union and the schengen treaty signatories to institute border controls once again should that be necessary. "we're ready," say the police. per larsen, the gentleman in charge of the copenhagen police efforts said in the new york times, "his officers would have low tolerance for behavior that deviates from "Danish society as we prefer it to be." that could get interesting.

so there you have it. we're ready. the world's top leaders are coming (not all of them for the right bit of the meeting, ahem, mr. obama), but the meeting is expected to fizzle out and not achieve any legally binding agreement. the best anyone is hoping for is political agreement, but even that looks like a bit of a longshot.

the climate skeptics have given voice again in recent weeks in the lead-up. but i see signs of climate change all around. yes, the rose in my garden had frost on it last week, but the fact is that it's december and it's still blooming and we're not talking not only one rose, but several of them (tho' i only photographed the one). on the weekend, i saw forsythia blooming down the street, tho' ours isn't (our yard is north-facing and cooler and shadier). there was a canola field near sabin's riding school with many of those characteristic yellow flowers beginning to show. the climate is changing. and if there's a chance that there's something we can do about it, we should do so, immediately. at the very least, fossil fuels are limited and we've got to come up with alternative energy sources if we're going to continue in the lifestyle to which we've been accustomed (if that's even a good idea).

i've said it before (tho' cannot find the post for the life of me), i fear that it will take losing a major european country, like the netherlands, which will be severely affected by rising sea levels, before the world really wakes up. places like the seychelles and bangladesh are in danger too, but sadly, i believe the impact of losing them wouldn't be the same as it would losing the netherlands.

if i'm honest, i can see the upside in climate change for us living here in denmark. we're already increasingly able to grow grapes and that means we can make wine (pretty good if you've got an eye on self-sufficiency and a taste for the grape elixir). farmers are able to have two crops per year from their fields. in the decade i've been here, denmark has begun to grow corn. it's not as tall and robust as what you see in iowa, but corn nonetheless. and we could use more warm, sunny days.

i'm going to go in to the city to soak in the atmosphere with my camera and we've got couchsurfers galore coming (hotel rooms are scarce) in the coming days, so it will be interesting to see how it all unfolds. stay tuned, i'm sure i'll be returning to this subject.

a danish vineyard

i've said before that i'm actually quite ok with global warming because it seems to have a good effect on denmark. both winters and summers have gotten warmer in the decade i've been here and that seems like a good thing. of course, we can talk again when the sea levels rise and the innocent creek that's today a 100 meters from our house is lapping at our foundation...but in the meantime, i'll enjoy.

yesterday, after our visit to møn's klint, i visited a good friend who grew up on møn. her parents still live there on a large farm and she was home for the easter holiday. on the farm, they have a vineyard, with a number of kinds of grapes from the alsace and other regions similar in climate. they grow both reds and whites. rondo and regent grapes are the reds that they grow. one of the whites was related to riesling (but i neglected to note the name of it).

the grapes were not yet showing any sign of budding out, but irene's dad wasn't worried. he said they'd be budding in the next couple of weeks and that was fine. he said it was more important that there wasn't too much rain at the end of june/beginning of july when they flower and set their grapes, because they are self-pollinating and if the rain washes that away, the crop is not as large as it should be. and even more important was a sunny, warm september, when the grapes are ripening.

i asked if they could feel the effects of global warming on their project, but he actually said no. even without global warming, møn has more days of sunshine than anywhere else in denmark. and it's also frost free for 250 days of the year. the rest of denmark has, on average, 180 frost-free days. i definitely learned something there. i knew i loved møn, but didn't realize it was because the climate was so much milder.

irene's dad has gone together with 13 other guys and formed a collective to do this winemaking project. they've bought all of the necessary equipment and have it in an old butchering room on a nearby gods (very large manor-house type farm). a few of them raise the grapes and others do their part in the various stages...sorting the grapes, squashing them (not sure that's the technical term), then the entire process surrounding letting the wines age and eventually blending them. irene's dad said with a bit of a twinkle in his eye that the collective isn't very democratic--those who contribute the most and know the most make the decisions and the others just have to live with it.

they've got big stainless steel vats which were full of reds that would be ready to blend in a few months.

they're really mostly having fun and learning as they go along. they're making very drinkable table reds, port and even sparkling wines in the spirit of champagne. the club gets together and eats a big meal once a year in knight's hall of the otherwise mostly unused little castle nearby and tries out the fruits of their labors. i'd love to be a fly on the wall for one of those evenings.

the picture from yesterday was a close-up of the wax cork in this little oak barrel of port:

we tasted a bit of port that had only been aging for 6 months. it was still pretty grape-juice-agtig. but the deep, rich port color was already there and it will no doubt be wonderful in another 6-10 years.

looking at the oak barrels, i had visions of them branching out eventually into whiskies finished in port casks, along the lines of the good ones from glenmorangie in scotland. i'll have to suggest that next time i visit. it seems like just the thing for this particular gentlemen's club.

i have to admit, i love the global warming

it has been a stellar weekend. weather-wise. socially. every which way. amazing how things seem rosy when the sun is shining.

and the sun shined all weekend. i sat in my garden circle with a pot of tea and read my sunday paper this morning. i'm a little sunburned on my shoulders and nose. i feel i got a thorough dose of vitamin d. i attended a party last night across the sound in landskrona, where we sat out 'til 11 p.m.

in short, global warming is not really so bad from where i sit. in fact, we're probably benefitting from it.

normally this time of year, it's been raining and raining and raining, grey skies and the sun hasn't shown its golden face in weeks. the slugs are normally taking over the garden. stripping my roses of their leaves.

however, this year, it's been relatively dry. not so dry that it's not gloriously green, but dry enough to keep the slugs at bay. i haven't actually seen any yet.

my strawberries are loaded with blooms. my peonies are glorious. my poppies are lush and feeding their fat buds, which will burst out in a few weeks. the morning glory that was planted from seeds from my mom's morning glory in south dakota is growing like mad. my nova zembla (yes, i bought them for their nabokov reference) rhododendrons are in their full magenta glory.

spring is moving rapidly into summer and it's all accompanied by the most most amazing array of birdsong.

ahhh...i do so love the global warming in denmark.