A Tomato Does Not Grow in Brooklyn
The relentlessly rainy summer has played havoc with the tomato crop in backyard Brooklyn. With the season just about over, the six pampered plants on the back deck and patio have yielded just a handful of undersized tomatoes and only two specimens that qualify as fat and sassy.
This has been a weird gardening season from the very beginning. Egged on by torrential downpours during the spring, the two 60-foot locust trees that flank my backyard sprayed the patio with seedlings that would have blown away in a dry year. In a monsoon year, they took root in the spaces among the bricks.
This sudden carpet of tiny trees reminded me of a writer who said that asphalt New York would quickly revert to forest if sprouts were allowed to go unmolested in the streets. On the premise that two towering trees are quite enough, we have rooted out these crafty seedlings.
Pumped up by the rain, the locust trees fleshed out their branches and blocked out even more of the sparse sunlight. The thickening canopy created a rain-forest effect in the yard below, where the snails grew steadily bolder, munching down petunias in broad daylight.
My spectacular orange and yellow begonia escaped this period with a slight attack of scale. The pink hibiscus (which had held a sunny spot all along) came through unharmed.
The potted geraniums are typically the iron men of my garden. This year, they stopped blooming and developed a spotted blight I had never seen.
By the time the reluctant sun finally arrived, eight or nine once healthy plants had withered away and needed to be replaced.
Which brings me back to the disappointing tomato harvest. I don't generally think of gardening in terms of profit and loss. But taking into account pots, dirt, fertilizer, labor and emotional distress, the tomatoes of 2009 must be costing me something like 20 bucks apiece.
Denmark's prime minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, has sketched the outlines of a fallback position that would have all countries commit to achievable, transparent domestic targets while negotiations on a broader treaty continued. This is an honorable proposition that Mr. Obama can easily accept, but getting Mr. Hu to sign on -- and bring other developing countries with him -- may take some doing.
For years, Washington and Beijing have dodged their own responsibilities by making unreasonable demands of each other. China has insisted that the United States reduce emissions by 40 percent over 10 years, which is politically and technologically unrealistic. Many American lawmakers insist that China commit to binding emission caps now, but China -- which regards all caps with suspicion -- sees this as infringing on its freedom to manage its own economy.
At the same time, both nations are mindful of the potentially disastrous consequences of unchecked climate change, and both have taken steps to tame their emissions -- steps that could build a foundation for a more positive relationship. China has adopted tough fuel economy standards and strict efficiency codes for new buildings. Eager to win the global race for green jobs, it has stepped up investment in solar panels, wind turbines, rapid transit and hybrid electric cars. And while coal still provides 70 percent of its power, it is building fewer coal-fired plants and those it is building are cleaner.
For his part, Mr. Obama has embraced the climate challenge in a way his predecessor did not. He has approved new greenhouse gas standards for vehicles, proposed regulatory controls on power plant emissions and included $80 billion in his stimulus package for greater energy efficiency and cleaner technologies. Congress is halfway toward producing a bill to cap emissions.
An American company will soon build a solar-powered electric utility in China, and China has agreed to help build a wind farm in Texas. But the most important single thing the two countries can do is join in moving a new climate agreement forward.