I was enjoying growing vegetables. Then the climate crisis raised its ugly head | Bim Adewunmi

The humble vegetable patch has become ground zero for the climate era's cruelest trick. What begins as an act of nurturing—a child’s hand pressing a seed into soil—quickly morphs into a front-line observation post for ecological collapse. Bim Adewunmi’s reflection isn't just about wilting lettuce; it’s about the gut-punch realization that the most wholesome, mundane acts of sustenance are now gambles against a rigged climate system. This story signals a profound shift in how we experience the crisis. We’ve moved past the abstract melting glaciers and into the visceral reality of our own backyards. When heatwaves turn British soil to dust, it ceases to be a "future problem" and becomes a present-day heartbreak. That a parent-child bonding ritual is now shadowed by the anxiety of watering bans and shriveled harvests is the sharpest possible indictment of our delayed policy action. The home garden was supposed to be a sanctuary, a retreat from the machinery of a warming world. Instead, it has become a mirror reflecting exactly how fragile our food systems—and our emotional resilience—truly are. If we can no longer reliably coax a tomato from the earth in a temperate nation, we have officially run out of safe havens. The harvest we must now cultivate is not just vegetables, but urgency. Tend to it before the entire season of human comfort burns away.