Adaptation, not Mitigation

                Climate Change.

                Twenty years ago, when we first moved into our little house, I scraped and painted the entire exterior one summer. In doing so, I learned all about the micro-climates in the yard. The south facing wall was hot—to be avoided during peak sun hours—but could be used to grow heat loving crops. I moved my tomato barrels to that space and never looked back. They throve.  Every few years, I changed out the soil so that it was not diseased. I always had to water the plants more than when they were in the back yard, which is sometimes shaded, but they bounced back in the evening.

                This year, I decided to move crops around. I put the tomatoes in two raised beds in the back yard, where they are huge, lush, and covered with fruits. I planted my corn and scarlet runner beans in the front beds and the winter squashes in the barrels, dreaming of reading on the couch to the sound of rustling corn leaves.  It has been a failure. It looks like a scene from The Grapes of Wrath, even with daily watering.  

                What is different? Where we once had a few days a summer where the temperatures rose to the nineties in that space of the yard, we now have several days in a row where the temperature is over 100 degrees against the wall. The vines do not shade the wall; they cannot grow in the heat. The corn, which is a drier, grassy plant, is fried.  These very hot days are no longer an aberration that will shift quickly; they are normal.

                We talk about mitigation of climate change regularly, things we can do to reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. The usual—drive and fly less, eat less meat, insulate your attic, etc. We rarely talk about adaptation to the changes that have already occurred. I need to adapt to the changing climate in my yard. My mitigation—growing vines to cool the wall—has failed. I must adapt if I wish to use that space for growing crops. My plan for next year is garlic, some winter wheat, and early lettuces and mustards.  It will be mulched, but not planted, in late July and August. What else will we need to do to mitigate the impacts of increasingly hot, dry summers here in Oregon?