Here’s the Vineyard at the Rise, frozen with grapes on the vine.

And here is the picking team.

And the administration…

I’m all for feeding the birds, but it would have been better to have had a thriving grassland. With birds.

Instead, we have this mess:

There are already too many vineyards in the world, and already too few grasslands, but that’s settler culture for you. It has to settle stuff. That’s the rule. Ironically…

… 9 degrees (celsius) of frost didn’t bother the poplars greatly, nor the choke cherries:

All is well there:

Really, it’s not so much climate change from an Earthly sense, but a disruption to settler expectations. Take this apple orchard below the vineyard (and below these choke cherries):

Note how a kind of industrial farming needs lots of top growth to draw nutrients through the tree, which then has to be pruned off for the fruit to ripen properly. This fall wasn’t quite one for this aggressive stance and the pruning was cut short just as it began.

The fruit was harvested, but don’t expect sweetness or very much, really. Of course, there are too many apples in the world, and not enough work for people. The expectation that apples can be grown on ever-poorer land, with ever-less labour, just doesn’t fit the climate, not like the choke cherry does.

Or the Oregon grape.

Red leaves make their own heat.

Climate change? Only the climate for settler culture.