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Here in Hawaii, I have a mango tree, a lychee tree, three ti trees, and a row of naupaka in my backyard. Folklore has it that this shrub has only produced half of its flowers since their separation a long time ago. Forbidden lovers.
Do you want these in your Wisconsin garden? Wait a minute!
For the first time since 2012, the Department of Agriculture has updated its plant hardiness zone map, which shows what can grow where across the country, with extremely cold winter temperatures as a limiting factor. Understandably, things got heated.
changes in plant hardiness zones,
Comparison with 2012 2023
Every state has regions that have transitioned to warmer climates. Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee saw an average increase of 5°F.
Note: Some of the changes are due to differences in modeling methods and data availability.
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Oregon State University
changes in plant hardiness zones,
Comparison with 2012 2023
Every state has regions that have transitioned to warmer climates. Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee saw an average increase of 5°F.
Note: Some of the changes are due to differences in modeling methods and data availability.
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Oregon State University
Changes in plant hardiness zones in 2023 compared to 2012
Every state has regions that have transitioned to warmer climates. Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee saw an average increase of 5°F.
Note: Some of the changes are due to differences in modeling methods and data availability.
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Oregon State University
Changes in plant hardiness zones in 2023 compared to 2012
Every state has regions that have transitioned to warmer climates. Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee saw an average increase of 5°F.
Note: Some of the changes are due to differences in modeling methods and data availability.
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Oregon State University
Nature writer Tove Danovich and Post Opinion graphic reporter Yan Wu have put together a great interactive essay exploring the results. Seriously, I've been playing around with this newsletter so long that I sent it to my editor late. Enter your U.S. zip code to see how its hardiness zone has changed since her 2012 and read Danovich's explanation of what that means.
Unfortunately, not all fruits are tropical. This news is complicated for hobby gardeners who can try new plants but may struggle with old workhorses. It has a completely negative impact on the restoration of native habitat. Danovich writes: “If native sugar maples no longer thrive in New York State, what will that mean for the ecosystems that have come to depend on them?”
As she often does in her post work, Danovich gets a little lyrical towards the end. She explains her term “solastosia,” or “missing an environment that no longer exists.” The world around us is changing, she writes, and there may be good things in the future.
But with only half of the flowers left, now is the time to appreciate them for what they are.
Appeal for justice from Russia
Yulia Navalnaya shouldn't have written an op-ed for the Washington Post. She shouldn't have had to play politics or push the international order.
But when Russian leader Vladimir Putin ordered the murder of her husband, imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny, “it left me with no other choice,” Navalnaya wrote.
So listen to Mr. Navalny's words, what Mr. Navalny was trying to say before he was imprisoned and killed. It begins with, “Putin is not a politician, he's a gangster.”
Mr. Navalnaya deconstructs Putin's claims about actual governance, revealing him to be nothing more than a brutal and cynical mafia boss. Through this lens, she writes, we discover “ways to punish him and hasten his end” – ways to take away his status and money.
It starts, she argues, with the international community's refusal to recognize the results of this weekend's Russian presidential election.
Chaser: Don't lose sight of “other Navalnyites” – the thousands of dispossessed political prisoners around the world, the editorial board writes.
From Megan McArdle's column on the challenges Congress faces in getting TikTok sold to Chinese parent company ByteDance. First, 100 million users have mobilized with in-app banners calling on lawmakers to end the ban.
Unfortunately, Megan says, “These impassioned demands to leave TikTok alone have heightened concerns among lawmakers that communist operatives are shaping the minds of vulnerable Americans.'' ” he wrote. The real problem with sales comes after the law is passed.
It would have to go through the courts, and Megan imagines ByteDance would have to find a buyer for TikTok that could withstand a hefty price tag of hundreds of billions of dollars. Perhaps a Big Tech player? But then antitrust issues boomed.
If the sale stalls over any of these hurdles, the lawmakers who called for the sale may be left asking, “What's in it for all that's going on?” why did i do that?
Chaser: The editorial board writes that TikTok's ostensible threat has not materialized in the United States. Lawmakers are going too far in trying to ban it.
Stroll through the settlements near Kibbutz Rem in southern Israel, as Editor-in-Chief Editor Mark Lasswell did recently, and you'll see a portrait of one of the young men killed in October's Hamas attack hung on each wall. You will be walking through a forest lined with hundreds of metal pillars. Seven people were attacked at a music festival there.
“So many people are smiling and hopeful and beautiful,” Mark wrote. “Sometimes I look away when I think about what happened to them.”
His column is an account of the calm that currently characterizes the scene directly and the chaos captured in the new documentary #NOVA. The film is an unnarrated film and is “consisted almost entirely of evidence from cell phones and videos of festival goers” taken by terrorists. ”
Mark reports that it's hard to watch, especially knowing the quiet clearness that what's on the screen ultimately leads to it.
Chaser: Perry Bacon details the enlightened activist movement pushing President Biden's Gaza policy.
Former Post editorial editor Ken Eikenberry died last week. He was a talented writer who found the extraordinary in the ordinary, the editorial board wrote in his eulogy. The Supreme Court has balked at race-based admissions, writes George Will. The real problem with the Trump-Biden choice, argues journalist Robert Wright, is that both are too at odds with China.
Goodbye. It's a haiku. It's… Bye-Ku.
reflecting the green bay sun
Do you have a popular haiku of your own? If you have any questions/comments/ambiguities, please email me. see you tomorrow!