Completely Backwards: Vermont Lilacs Blooming In October!

Lilacs bloom on the tree outside my house in 
St. Albans, Vermont this week. Stress from a
wet spring, a blight and drought have caused
this out of season display. 

You might have seen the following in your travels lately and said, what the hell?!?!?

Lilacs are blooming in Vermont. In October. 

Lilacs are of course a highly welcomed sight in May. What's not to love about them? When they bloom, they signal that you're in the heart of spring.

 They smell absolutely divine. And they're gorgeous. And traditional. I don't think I've ever seen an old farm house in Vermont without a lilac bush that's almost as old as the house. 

These lilac bushes usually cede beauty to the sugar maples in the autumn. While our hillsides glow orange and red and yellow, lilac bushes normally just drop their green leaves late in the autumn, and you're done until spring. Ho-hum.

This year, our lilac bushes were stressed by topsy turvy weather much more so than usual. Yes, we can blame climate change for another round of weather extremes in 2025.  

This year, we had an unusually wet, sopping spring. That encouraged a leaf blight to take hold in lilac leaves. That's a huge part of the reason why you saw so many lilac bushes with curled up, browning leaves that fell off prematurely. The blight - as you can imagine - stressed the lilac bushes. 

Then, the rain shut off in July, and we sank into our big flash drought. That stressed the lilac trees even more. 

"Stressful conditions put the plant in a dormant-like state and when the cooler temperatures and shorter days of fall arrive, some of the flower buds are triggered to bloom," Iowa State University Extension explains. 

We also finally got some rain in late September, which also might have helped trigger the odd new blooms.  

The good news is the blight, the drought and the weird October blooming won't kill or really harm your lilac bushes. These are really, really tough plants. Ever try to kill a lilac? It's almost impossible. Besides, why would anyone want to kill a lilac?

Next May, your suffering lilac will bloom beautifully, and on schedule. It might have fewer blooms than usual, because the tree put on some of its blooming effort this month. 

The strange doings with lilacs are a sign that weather extremes brought on by climate change are having an effect on everything.  In the springs of 2021 and 2023, for the first time in my life, I noticed freeze damage to lilac blooms.

In both those years, oddly warm early spring weather got trees leafing out and blooming way too early. Then snow and frost and deep freezes hit, turning some of those gorgeous lavender lilac blooms a disappointing brown. Or they didn't bloom at all in some cases.

Hopefully, normal amounts of precipitation will return soon. The drought here in Vermont and the rest of northern New England is still in full force. The latest weekly U.S. Drought reports comes out later this morning. I'll put up a post about that update here in this blog thingy later today. 

Maybe we'll get lucky and the weather during the spring and summer of 2026 will be pretty moderate to give all our garden plants a break. 

But give the climate change that everyone is experiencing, I'm sure something bizarro will happen next growing season, too.  

Stress Of Recovering From Weather/Climate Disasters Compounded By Politics And Ideology

Recovery from weather and climate disasters like 
Hurricane Helene in western North Carolinas is being
made much more difficult and stressful due to
political preening and ideological rigidity. 

The good news from that mess of a time last week in Washington is $110 billion in disaster relief was ultimately include in a government funding bill that averted a government shutdown. 

For the many victims of recent weather and climate disasters, the stupid battle in Washington just added to the stress and exasperation of those just trying to get a semblance of their old lives back. 

Especially since there was wide, bipartisan Congressional support for the disaster relief, but the whole thing was unnecessarily hijacked by ideologues, narcissists, politicians and hangers who believed getting in front of TV cameras and on social media is more important than actually doing their jobs. 

The result was the disaster relief package went through, but caused a lot of unnecessary stress among those who are counting on the federal help. 

"This is ridiculous," North Carolina restaurateur Katie Button told the Washington Post, with considerable understatement. 

The disaster relief is needed in a whole bunch of American places, including here in Vermont, but perhaps especially in Hurricane Helene-trashed western North Carolina. 

People in these disaster zones did receive immediate relief right after the calamities, such as temporary housing or reimbursements for staying in hotels.

But what they really need now - be they in Hawaii, or Vermont, or Florida, or North Carolina - is help rebuilding roads, loans to keep businesses afloat, aid to farmers to recover from the destruction stuff like that. 

These are the types of aid that got held up in the government shutdown battle last week.  It's also the type of help Congress should have approved months ago. 

According to the Washington Post:

"...the problem isn't limited to any one state of catastrophe - those recovering from the past two years of floods and fires say a faster and more permanent solution is needed for victims of the next tragedy.

At a news conference at the U.S. Capitol this month, disaster survivors from across the country asked lawmakers to not just approve the current recovery bill, but to permanently authorize a pot of money that can go out right after a disaster."

Here's just one tiny example of what a small town has to do when it's hit be a weather/climate disaster and Congress and politicians posture instead of do their job. 

Another section of Interstate 40 in western North Carolina
recently collapsed due to damage from Hurricane 
Helene back in September. This is another delay to
storm recovery, demonstrating just how hard it can
be to recover from weather and climate calamities

An intense July flash flood in the tiny, mountainous town of Bolton, Vermont suffered immense road damage. Many of the roads are gravel, on steep hills, so they were especially susceptible to damage.

Bolton was still waiting for federal aid to pay for the road fixes, and those bills are due. So, voters there on December 17 passed a $3 million bond to pay for the contractors who repair the road. They couldn't wait any longer for the FEMA aid to come that would fund the road repairs. 

It's a 10 year bond, so this will fall at least to an extent on already stressed Bolton property taxpayers.   Eventually, FEMA will provide money for those repairs. We think. But we have no idea how long that will take. And will the incoming Trump administration screw that up somehow?  We hope not. 

Now magnify Bolton, Vermont's experience many times over when you go to North Carolina. 

At least in Vermont, despite have a Republican governor and a Democratically controlled legislature, the lawmakers more or less cooperated and did what they could in the wake of the series of destructive floods that started in July, 2023.

No such luck in North Carolina, where partisanship got in the way of flood relief.  Washington Post explains:

"When North Carolina lawmakers passed their latest recovery package for the Hurricane Helene - ravaged western part of their state this month, it didn't feel like relief to residents there, many hoping for small business grants or eviction bans.

"Most of the aid bills 132 pages focused on stripping powers from state offices that will soon be held by Democrats. 

Gov. Ray Cooper (D) proposed a $3.9 billion relief package, with $650 million for economic assistance including all business grants, and another $650 million to address housing needs. That would go along with more than $25 billion that Cooper requested from the federal government for Helene recovery efforts. 

.....but the Republican-controlled state legislature didn't follow that plan."

The Republicans did pass three relief bills. One provided $100 million for water and wastewater infrastructure repairs, $50 million for public school repairs, $50 million in small business loans, $25 million for mental health resources and $9 million for utility fixes.

Local leaders in western North Carolina have said they appreciate any kind of assistance, every little bit helps, but they are frustrated the Republican state package did not include more direct assistance to people struggling after the calamity. 

I do like the $25 million North Carolina is allocating for mental heath services in the disaster zone, but I think it should be more. 

The trauma of enduring a weather and climate disaster is tough on mental health. Investing in mental health services in the aftermath of such an event probably benefits the whole region or state. After all, the better people are able to get back on their feet, but physically and emotionally, the more everybody benefits. 

 In Vermont, the state's Agency of Human Services mental health division has the Starting Over Strong VT program to help people and communities recover from recent disasters. It covers the counties declared disaster areas from last year's flooding - Addison, Caledonia, Chittenden, Essex, Lamoille, Orleans and Washington counties.

It seems to have been a success, as state officials say it has helped 14,000 or so participants since it was launched shortly after devastating floods in the summer of 2023.  Since then, we have had more destructive, home and business-destroying floods.

This program was slated to end this past October, but state officials have decided to extend it through July, 2025.  I'm hoping we don't have any further Vermont calamities between now and then.

Of course, the way the federal government is handling things, and seems destined to essentially not handle things over the next few years, I'd probably advocate for the Starting Over Strong program to continue indefinitely.