Beauty and the Beast

Global warming is like purple loosestrife, that gorgeous but invasive weed that has managed to take over eastern Canada’s wetlands, or at least strike an uneasy truce with the indigenous flora that we were sure was going to be totally and utterly done out of its habitat. Driving from Quebec to Ontario on a summer day one can look across large tracts of swampland, which one time was all green with grasses and bullrushes, topped later in the season by brown cattails (you still see people parking their cars at the side of the highway in order to gather them before they ripen and turn into fluffy masses of exploding seeds), now mostly purple, the flowers of the invading weed a thrill to the eye.

The weather is gorgeous for this time of year. Today the sun was shining, it was mild, springlike, certainly not Decemberish. We’re usually experiencing a deep freeze by now. No, if this is what the Swiss Alps are experiencing, I can understand the appearance of spring flowers and fruit tree blossoms. Way too many people are rejoicing at this balmy reprieve from bleak mid-winter in the same way that gardeners, all unaware, plant purple loosestrife in their borders because of its beauty. I admit it, I prefer warmth to cold, but there is something also terribly wrong with this picture.

Purple loosestrife seems to have found a balance in Ontario and Quebec’s wetlands. I fear that the weather has much farther to go in establishing a pattern that is indicative of what is really going on with melting polar ice caps, shifting ocean currents and depleted ozone. I, for one, do not find either of the objects of this entry particularly attractive.

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