WARNING! CLIMATE CHANGE SCORCHES FLOWERS

Living in the heartland, I've never been too concerned about global warming.  Yes, I know it's melting ice in Antarctica and causing forest fires in California, but it's always seemed like something we don't have to worry so much about in the middle of the country.

Until this year.  Here's what happened to our flowers:  We've had a large bed of impatiens blooming beside our house for over 25 years.  Whether we planted the old fashioned kind or the new fangled "sunpatiens," by the end of the summer we would have a beautiful showing of colorful impatiens that seemed to thrive on nothing more than regular watering.  Then, this year, around the middle of July, I noticed they had stopped blooming, altogether.  A couple of weeks later, they were just little, rotting stems poking out from the dirt.  My lawn person said it happened to a lot of flowers this year:  They simple shriveled up and died because of the extreme heat and humidity.

To compensate, we decided to plant some of those sturdy, pink and yellow  black eyed Susans you see thriving at this time of the year.  Bought the flowers at the nursery;  planted, mulched , watered them.  Within two weeks, they had dried up, leaving nothing but black stems.

On to the roses.  Have had  two red and white, variegated climbing roses out by the garage for over 20 years.  First one of them died, but it looked like the other one was struggling to make it.  And yet, the same week we lost our impatiens, the climbing roses lost their leaves.  Ditto for the rose garden next to the house.  Out of nine rosebushes still alive last fall, only one sturdy soldier is still standing right now.  We bought and planted 9 new ones, only 5 of which are struggling to stay green.

Okay, those are just flowers.  Their loss is aesthetic, but not life changing.  What about the farmers in Indiana and elsewhere? Scientists predict wheat and soybean crops will be reduced by 50% by the end of the century!  Now, I'm really getting worried, because I've seen first hand the effects of global warming, and I hate to think my descendants will be struggling to survive in the next century.

Here in flyover country, it looks like we're going to have to start doing something about Global Warming.