The crocus are up. It’s still February and too early for flowers but maybe this isn’t a bad thing. What if there are insects that need early pollen? What if this just helps the ecosystem adapt to changes in weather and climate?
The problem, I tell the client after they broach these questions, is not that they’re wrong, but that they are not entirely right, either.
If everything shifts ahead two months we don’t get ecological business-as-usual. The ecosystem is not a machine crafted for all the parts to fit together perfectly in synchronous lockstep. It is a mess of chaos with each part of the system pushing or pulling to such a granular level of refinement you get balance.
This only works if the balance is maintained, if the other plants, insects, animals, and microbiota actually move up their schedule, too. Or, if even only the pollinator is awake at the same time the flower is blooming.
The problems is, it’s possible for things to become out of sync due to temperature-induced gaps in the flower-bloom schedule. An example of this could be pollinators hibernating while flowers bloom and then wilt too soon when a “late” freeze arrives.
It’s not the freeze that’s late, I tell them, it’s that the flowers are early…but that’s just me being selfish because I love winter, and miss playing hockey on the lake with friends.