Seasonal Sun Returns to my Window and Trees

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Tis the season, the return of glare. As the sun’s arc lowers/moves south, it returns to shining in my eyes at the home office.  This is a mixed thing because that means winter’s on the way.  It is both a marvel and curse that just outside this window will be temperatures approaching 100F and -20F.  We can’t all be Cuernavaca, MX with an annual temp range of 60-80F, K oppen-Geiger=Cwb. Except for volcanic and seismic activity...

Anyway, I’m also lucky to have trees shading the yard.  Their leaves will soon fall, so I get better solar warming in the winter even though video calls get a little problematic.  First world problems, amIright?  We’re entertaining adding a tree to our back yard.  I whined initially about it cutting our play-space but the granddaughters are showing remarkable lack of interest in anything outdoors.  Now I’m swinging to Shiny Wife’s PoV and adding a tree would be some good shade.

Naturally, if I’m going to do something, I’m going extreme.  I’d love to plant one of the hybrid American Chestnuts even though it would be making messes all over the yard.  I read a delightful scifi book that used trees as a storytelling device and the extinction of the American Chestnut is really sad.  Naturally it was artificial, we introduced the Asian variant along with its pathogenic fungus and killed off one of the reasons European colonization succeeded.  The variety of sustenance that tree gave First Peoples and white colonizers cannot be understated.

But of course, the new American Chestnut hybrid is a GMO. We’ve borrowed an ability to metabolize oxalic acid from wheat and presto: a replacement for the most important plant in our history.  But oh noes, GMOs can’t be good because science is always bad in those movies and stories.  Hubris, we have it.  And so there’s a fight at the USFDA to classify the new tree as safe for peasants to plant.  Which of course has attracted well-funded reactionary organizations to …react.  And so, who knows.  Will it languish?  Could we visit the campuses and test plots where the new ones are growing and collect the nuts for …purposes?  Say, roasting?  Oops, that one fell out of the pan.  Oops.

Anyway, enough speculation, it’s autumn and I’m digging the ever-longer period of time when I can’t vid-conference because the sun is shining its gifts on me.