Sick trees and dinosaurs

The Kousa dogwood in Sue’s back yard is sick. We don’t yet know for sure, but we suspect a fungus. Its leaves are half the size they were last year, and they are curled and wrinkled. The tree is trying to blossom, but the blossoms are tiny and green instead of white. Here’s a comparison with the last time I blipped the tree. It’s possible that the tree is a victim of climate change, of the heat dome we suffered last year. 

And that brings me to the subject of dinosaurs, climate change, life and death.

Sue came back from her siblings with a new book we are riveted by: The Last Days of the Dinosaurs. Written by a Transgender person who has made their own massive transitions and writes science like a novelist, it’s a book we can hardly put down. The preface begins, “Catastrophe is never convenient.” Black describes in meticulous (and sometimes horrifying) detail exactly how it was on the day an asteroid 7 miles wide hit the earth near what is now Cancun, Mexico and brought an end to the age of dinosaurs. 

Transition, change, impermanence: it is where we all are, whether we acknowledge it or not.