The chilly weather and lack of company resulted in a brief solo visit to the garden today. Since there’s nothing much growing in the garden anymore and there’s not that much to do besides weeding and putting down woodchips, I just did the small task of deadheading one of the lemon balm plants. The lemon balm had flowered at the end of the summer leaving behind branches of small, brown, seed-filled capsules. While it’s not a big deal to remove the dried-out flower parts, it definitely makes the plant look nicer.
As I snipped away with a pair of clippers, I listened to the latest episode of my current favorite podcast “How to Save a Planet” which is about climate change issues and what we can do to address them. I’ve found it a great way to stay inspired on climate action and, with their more recent episodes, stay informed on the 2020 election from an environmental perspective.
The 2020 U.S. election happened this past week and just yesterday, the news networks finally made their official projection for Joe Biden as the next president. Hearing the announcement was a huge relief. Even though the major battleground states had been counting more and more votes for Biden over the days leading up to the final call, it was still nerve-wracking to wait and listen to all the back and forth. And looking at the election as a whole and seeing how it was such a close race instead of a landslide for Biden was pretty demoralizing. To realize that so many people actually wanted to give Trump a second term despite instance after instance of his poor leadership skills and lack of basic human decency he's demonstrated over the past four years felt like a punch to the gut.
But we’ve got a Biden-Kamala team awaiting us in 2021 which means an actual chance to start acting on climate change for real. The fact that I’m thrilled it’s even a possibility at all is more than a little bit sad. It really says a lot about just how much the Trump administration has set us back in environmental matters and now we have so much catching up to do. But the fact that Biden’s climate plan is really solid in how it incorporates social justice and the economy feels like such a breath of fresh air.
There’s no question that it’ll take a lot of hard work to make anything happen and that there will most definitely be resistance to change, especially when it comes aggressively, which is what we need. Nevertheless, now that the U.S. has a leader that wants to actively address climate change, the hope I have for our future is much stronger. And that feeling of optimism is so empowering.
As I finished up with the lemon balm bush and collected the branches to put them in the compost, I noticed little black specks scattered all around the area. As small as fine grains of sand, they were little tiny seeds from the capsules. While I had a qudriedick pang of regret for not having a container with me to collect the seeds, there was something fitting about knowing the seeds were simply scattered around. Although not all of them may germinate, they could instead become food for birds or other creatures or simply return to the earth that produced them. The possibilities of new things to come in the future is exhilarating. We’ll just have to keep an eye out for what will come.
