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Whatever Happened to the Greenhouse Effect?
By Donella Meadows
–July 16, 1992–
For 20 years I’ve recorded the date of every first frost, first robin, first apple blossom, first sweet corn on my farm. My records show clearly that springs have been coming sooner and frosts later. I’ve come to count on a growing season almost a month longer than when I first moved here.
What happens on one [...]
Dear Folks: June 21, 1992
Dear Folks, Sunday morning, slightly rainy, thank heaven. We’ve had two brilliant, dry weeks, and the garden is very thirsty. A female cardinal is chipping at the birdfeeder just out the window to my left as I’m writing, and a multicolored bunch of hens is scratching under the lilac bush. Basil is snoring under my desk. The house is very quiet.
In [...]
Dear Folks: May 27, 1990
Dear Folks, In a fit of frustration Sylvia scrawled RAIN on the calendar across every day this month when it rained. Only two days were left clear. The brook is bank-full, the garden has been too squishy to walk in, the grass is growing like crazy but is too wet to mow. We have been very grumpy.
But yesterday it didn’t rain. [...]
Dear Folks: May 16, 1992
Dear Folks, I’ll make this a traveling letter this month, adding to it on planes and in airports, thanks to my Mac Powerbook, which now goes just about everywhere I go.
It’s a gorgeous May afternoon, the kind that makes you think you never, ever want to leave the Upper Valley of the Connecticut River. While thinking that, however, I’m sitting in [...]
Dear Folks: April 26, 1992
Dear Folks, A week ago the ground was covered with six inches of snow and I couldn’t summon up the psychic energy to do a single spring chore.
Today the grass is suddenly green. The first daffodils have opened, the spring peepers are singing, the forsythia is in bloom. In the mornings we hear new voices — robins and song sparrows and [...]
