A good article on changing seasons, or rather on unchanging seasons, and on the harms of 24/7 convenience stores.
We eat our strawberries, not knowing where they came from or at what cost, but they do taste nice. And if they spoil, we throw them out and buy more. Indeed, the increasingly superficial celebration of seasons here could actually mislead residents of Japan into believing we are more attentive to nature than is the case. With the country just emerging from its most extreme summer on record, an experience it shared with much of the Northern Hemisphere, perhaps there might be increasing honesty in facing the climate changes that appear to be unfolding. Or perhaps not.
In Pakistan strawberries are a winter fruit, but when I was growing up they were not a fruit at all, just something read about in Enid Blytons, except for the fortunate few who travelled abroad and learned the truth of fairy stories. Or maybe strawberries coming to Lahore was also a manifestation of climate change, as when my mother was a child she wore a coat to school, which I never needed, even in the dead of winter. Now winter is warm but it’s truly dead, with the air turned to poison gas.