A jury in Louisiana has ruled that Chevron must pay a parish government about $745 million to help restore wetlands that the jury said the energy company had harmed for decades. The verdict, which was reached on Friday, is likely to influence similar lawsuits filed by other parishes, or counties, in the state against other energy giants and their possible settlement negotiations. The lawsuit, filed by Plaquemines Parish, is one of at least 40 that coastal parishes have filed against fossil fuel companies since 2013. The lawsuit contended that Texaco — which Chevron bought in 2000 — violated state law for decades by failing to apply for coastal permits, and by not removing oil and gas equipment when it stopped using an oil field in Breton Sound, which is southeast of New Orleans. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT A state regulation in 1980 required companies operating in wetlands to restore “as near as practicable to their original condition” any canals that they dredged, wells that they drilled or wastewater that they dumped into marshes. Plaquemines Parish, which had sought $2.6 billion in damages, argued that wetland loss and pollution were directly linked to the oil and gas work. However, Chevron said that its activities were not responsible for the decades of damage. Moreover, it said that the regulations that went into effect in 1980 did not apply to oil and gas activity that began earlier. The jury, after a four-week trial, awarded Plaquemines Parish $575 million to compensate for land loss, $161 million to compensate for contamination and $8.6 million for abandoned equipment. Chevron said it would appeal the verdict. “This verdict is just one step in the process to establish that the 1980 law does not apply to conduct that occurred decades before the law was enacted,” Mike Phillips, the lead trial lawyer for Chevron, said in a statement on Saturday. “Chevron is not the cause of the land loss occurring in Breton Sound.” Louisiana’s state government, while usually friendly to the oil and gas industry, took the side of Plaquemines in the lawsuit, as the state struggles to reverse vast coastal land loss. The state has lost more than 2,000 square miles, about the land area of Delaware, because of sea level rise and the loss of sediment that a free-flowing Mississippi River used to leave behind along the coast, until the river was constrained by levees built for flood control. The loss in Plaquemines Parish, which is 10 miles downriver of New Orleans, is particularly acute. The parish has been reduced by nearly half its original size in the last century. Oil-and-gas canals crisscross its wetlands, exacerbating seawater destruction of marsh vegetation. The state has taken aggressive countermeasures. Louisiana has enacted a 50-year, $50 billion coastal master plan to try to save what it can from the rising Gulf of Mexico. The plan includes 124 projects designed to dredge sand, rebuild degraded marshes, and add levees, floodgates and storm surge barriers. It aims to create tens of thousands of acres of new land, preserve what land remains and protect the coast from hurricanes and sea-level rise. The state received billions of dollars from the settlement of lawsuits stemming from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which was the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

The U.S. added 228,000 jobs in March, far more than the 140,000 economists had expected. Unemployment ticked up slightly to 4.2% from 4.1% the month before. Last month’s gains far outnumber the 117,000 roles added in February, according to data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Health care, transportation and warehousing were among the sectors that added roles in March. Federal hiring declined amid sweeping cuts to the government’s workforce, though many of those layoffs aren’t showing up yet in official figures due to leave and severance policies and routine lags in data gathering. The March report shows a resilient U.S. economy, though it’s already a snapshot in time. After President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs announcement Wednesday slammed into global markets, analysts say the labor market is likely to enter more uncertain terrain. “This report isn’t likely to be seen as more important than the trade war,” Kathy Jones, chief fixed income strategist at Charles Schwab, wrote on X Friday morning following the release. Goldman Sachs analysts offered much the same take. “Today’s better than expected jobs report will help ease fears of an immediate softening in the US labor market. However, this number has become a side dish with the market just focusing on the entrée: tariffs,” they wrote Friday. Stock futures continued to plummet before U.S. markets opened Friday morning, after notching their worst single trading day since the depths of the pandemic on Thursday. The slight rise in unemployment last month likely reflects people heading back into the workforce in search of jobs. The labor force participation rate ticked up slightly as well, to 62.5%. But the March numbers also showed average hourly wage growth slowed, and temporary layoffs eased while permanent job losses inched higher. Private-sector hiring continued to chug along, according to figures released this week by payroll processor ADP. But they, too, showed a slowdown in pay growth, with the average raises earned by people changing jobs hitting a low not seen since September. And a separate BLS release this week found that while layoffs have remained subdued, so has hiring. “Next month is when hard data is likely to start showing signs of what soft data has already been signalling,” Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management, wrote in a note to clients Friday morning. Data published Thursday by the jobs and career consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas singled out Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency as responsible for over 216,000 announced reductions in the federal workforce in March. “The market needed today’s number,” Shah wrote. “Everyone knows that economic weakness is coming, but at least we can be reassured that the labor market was robust coming into this policy-driven shock.

Oil prices plunged Thursday on fears that President Trump’s latest round of tariffs will slow economic growth around the world, curbing demand for gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other forms of energy. The U.S. oil price fell about 7 percent on Thursday, settling at just below $67 a barrel, around mid-March levels. Prices for many metals, including copper, silver and gold, also fell sharply. Mr. Trump had sought to insulate the U.S. energy industry from a trade war by exempting energy and certain minerals from the tariffs he announced on Wednesday. But the broader impact of his tariffs is likely to outweigh any effort by the administration to protect specific sectors. An exchange-traded fund composed of U.S. oil and gas companies closed down more than 10 percent on Thursday, more than twice as much as the S&P 500 stock index. Shares of Exxon Mobil, the largest U.S. oil company, closed down more than 5 percent, and Chevron’s stock closed down more than 6 percent. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The combination of lower oil prices and higher costs for essential materials like steel pipe threatens to squeeze domestic oil and gas producers. There is also a risk that some countries could target oil and natural gas — key U.S. exports — if they retaliate against the tariffs Mr. Trump has put in place. The president has imposed particularly steep tariffs on some of the biggest markets for U.S. energy, including China, Japan and members of the European Union. Companies generally need prices above $60 a barrel in order to make money drilling new oil wells in the United States. Adding to pressure on oil prices, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies said on Thursday that they would increase production more quickly than anticipated. The group has been voluntarily holding back output to keep prices elevated. “While the meeting was known, the announcement comes as a surprise, particularly after President Trump’s newly announced tariffs,” TPH & Company analysts wrote in a note to investors.

A surge in federal government job cuts contributed to a near record-setting pace for announced layoffs in March, exceeded only by when the country shut down in 2020 for the Covid pandemic, according to a report Thursday from job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Furloughs in the federal government totaled 216,215 for the month, part of a total 275,240 reductions overall in the labor force. Some 280,253 layoffs across 27 agencies in the past two months have been linked to the Elon Musk-led so-called Department of Government Efficiency and its efforts to pare down the federal workforce. The monthly total was surpassed only by April and May of 2020 in the early days of the pandemic when employers announced combined reductions of more than 1 million, according to Challenger records going back to 1989. It also was the highest March on record. “Job cut announcements were dominated last month by Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE] plans to eliminate positions in the federal government,” said Andrew Challenger, senior vice president and workplace expert at the firm. “It would have otherwise been a fairly quiet month for layoffs.” However, DOGE has continued to cut aggressively across the government. Various reports have indicated that the Veterans Affairs Department could lose 80,000 jobs, the IRS is in line for some 18,000 reductions and The Treasury is expected to drop a “substantial” level of workers as well, according to a court filing. The year-to-date tally for federal government announced layoffs represents a 672% increase from the same period in 2024, according to Challenger. Recommended Business News A man once sued by the SEC wins Trump crypto contest to have dinner with the president Autos Cadillac's EVs are attracting new buyers, including more customers trading in Teslas To be sure, the outsized layoff plans haven’t made their way into other jobs data. Weekly unemployment claims have held in a fairly tight range since President Donald Trump took office. Payroll growth has slowed a bit from its pace in 2024 but is still positive, while job openings have receded but only to around their pre-pandemic levels. However, the Washington, D.C., area has been hit particularly hard by the announced layoffs, which have totaled 278,711 year to date for the city, according to the report.

DETROIT — Stellantis is pausing production at two assembly plants in Canada and Mexico as the company attempts to navigate President Donald Trump’s new round of 25% automotive tariffs, the company confirmed Thursday. The actions are the swiftest and most drastic by an automaker regarding the new tariffs, which took effect Thursday and are imposed on all vehicles imported to the U.S., including from Canada and Mexico. The downtime starts Monday and is set for two weeks at the automaker’s Windsor Assembly Plant in Ontario, Canada, and the entire month of April at its Toluca Assembly Plant in Mexico. As a result of the pause in production, about 900 U.S.-represented employees at supporting plants will be temporarily laid off in addition to about 4,500 hourly workers at the Canadian plant, according to a company spokeswoman. Workers at the plant in Mexico will still report to the facility but not produce vehicles due to their contract terms, the spokeswoman said

A 50% reciprocal trade tariff on Lesotho, the highest levy on U.S. President Donald Trump’s long list of target economies, will kill the tiny Southern African kingdom that Trump ridiculed last month, an economic analyst there said on Thursday. Lesotho, which Trump described in March as a country “nobody has ever heard of,” is one of the world’s poorest nations with a gross domestic product of just over $2 billion. It has a large trade surplus with the United States, mostly made up of diamonds and textiles, including Levi’s jeans. Its exports to the United States, which in 2024 totalled $237 million, account for more than 10% of its GDP. Oxford Economics said the textile sector, with some 40,000 workers, was Lesotho’s biggest private employer and accounted for roughly 90% of manufacturing employment and exports. “Then you are having retailers who are selling food. And then you have residential property owners who are renting houses for the workers. So this means if the closure of factories were to happen, the industry is going to die and there will be multiplier effects,” Lesotho Private Sector Foundation CEO Thabo Qhesi said. “So Lesotho will be dead, so to say.” Ridiculed for imposing trade tariffs on frozen islands largely inhabited by penguins, Donald Trump’s formula for calculating those levies has a serious side: it is also hitting some of the world’s poorest nations hardest.The math is simple: take the U.S. goods trade deficit with a country, divide it by that country’s exports to the U.S. and turn it into a percentage figure; then cut that figure in half to produce the U.S. “reciprocal” tariff, with a floor of 10%. That’s how the volcanic Australian territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands in the Antarctic ended up with a 10% tariff. The penguins got off lightly, you might say.

The nation’s most polluting coal-burning power plant has asked President Trump to exempt it from stricter limits on hazardous air pollution after the administration recently invited companies to apply for presidential pollution waivers by email. The aging Colstrip power plant in Colstrip, Mont., emits more harmful fine particulate matter pollution, or soot, than any other power plant in the nation, Environmental Protection Agency figures show. A new rule adopted by the Biden administration in 2023 would have compelled the facility — the only coal plant in the country to lack modern pollution controls — to install new equipment. Now, the Colstrip plant has applied for a two-year exemption to those rules, according to Montana’s congressional delegation, which backed the request. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The new pollution standard “endangers the economic viability of the plant, which if closed, would undermine the region’s electric grid,” Senator Steve Daines and other members of the delegation wrote in a letter sent on Monday to the E.P.A. administrator, Lee Zeldin. “Without Colstrip, consumers would bear the burden of higher energy costs and grid unreliability, and its closure would stymie economic development in the region.” Health experts noted that the letter didn’t address the health effects of the fine pollution particles. Numerous studies have shown the particles are small enough to penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream, where they can travel to the heart and other organs, increasing mortality from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. A 2023 study showed that coal-burning power stations, in particular, emit fine particulates containing sulfur dioxide linked with higher mortality than other types of pollution. This pollution “can be very damaging to young kids in particular, who have developing lungs,” said Robert Merchant, a pulmonologist in Billings, Mont. The delegation’s letter, he said, shows “a complete indifference to the health harms.” The Colstrip plant’s request for an exemption from stricter pollution rules came after the E.P.A. told companies last month that they could apply for waivers to major clean-air rules by emailing the agency. The E.P.A. pointed to a section of the Clean Air Act that enables the president to temporarily exempt industrial facilities from new rules if the technology required to meet those rules isn’t available, and if it’s in the interest of national security. The Trump administration has also announced its intention to roll back a slew of rules entirely, which could eventually mean that plants like the one in Colstrip would not have to meet new pollution standards at all. The move was part of a wider effort by Mr. Zeldin to steer the agency away from its original role of environmental protection and regulation and toward making energy and cars more affordable. NorthWestern Energy Group and Talen Energy, which operate the plant along with other minority owners, did not immediately respond to comment. Any exemption granted by the Trump administration is likely to face legal challenges from environmental groups. In drawing up the new rules, the Biden administration had identified technology already available that would allow the Colstrip facility to meet stricter standards, and that had been widely adopted by other coal plants in the country. The Biden administration also estimated that the new pollution control technology would cost far less to install than the $500 million the Colstrip plant has said it would take. “These technologies are available,” said Amanda Levin, director of policy analysis at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, “but Colstrip decided not to invest when every other coal plant in the nation did.”

When the environmental group Greenpeace lost a nearly $670 million verdict this month over its role in oil pipeline protests, a quarter-billion dollars of the damages were awarded not for the actual demonstrations, but for defaming the pipeline’s owner. The costly verdict has raised alarm among activist organizations as well as some First Amendment experts, who said the lawsuit and damage awards could deter free speech far beyond the environmental movement. The verdict “will send a chill down the spine of any nonprofit who wants to get involved in any political protest,” said David D. Cole, a professor at Georgetown Law and former national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “If you’re the Sierra Club, or the N.A.A.C.P., or the N.R.A., or an anti-abortion group, you’re going to be very worried.” The lawsuit, filed by Energy Transfer in 2019, accused Greenpeace of masterminding an “unlawful and violent scheme” to harm the company’s finances, employees and infrastructure and to block the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Greenpeace countered that it had promoted peaceful protest and had played only a minor role in the demonstrations, which were led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe over concerns about its ancestral land and water supply. A key part of Energy Transfer’s case relied on defamation claims. For example, the jury found that Greenpeace defamed the company by saying it had “damaged at least 380 sacred and cultural sites” during pipeline work, the first of nine statements found defamatory. Greenpeace called Energy Transfer’s lawsuit an attempt to muzzle the company’s critics. “This case should alarm everyone, no matter their political inclinations,” said Sushma Raman, interim executive director of Greenpeace USA. “We should all be concerned about the future of the First Amendment.” Greenpeace has said it will appeal to the Supreme Court in North Dakota, the state where the trial was held. Free-speech issues are widely expected to figure prominently in that filing. But Greenpeace was not the only party invoking the First Amendment. Upon leaving the courtroom, the lead lawyer for Energy Transfer, Trey Cox of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, called the verdict “a powerful affirmation” of the First Amendment. “Peaceful protest is an inherent American right,” he said. “However, violent and destructive protest is unlawful and unacceptable.” Vicki Granado, a spokeswoman for Energy Transfer, described the verdict as “a win for all law-abiding Americans who understand the difference between the right to free speech and breaking the law.” The clashing comments shine a light on a central tension in the debate: Where do you draw the line between peaceful protest and unlawful activity? “If people are engaged in non-expressive conduct, like vandalism, like impeding roadways such that cars and passers-by can’t use those roadways, the First Amendment is not going to protect that,” said JT Morris, a senior supervising attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit that defends free speech across the ideological spectrum. “But peaceful protest, criticism of companies on matters of public concern, those are all protected.” The verdict landed in the midst of a larger debate over the limits of free speech. President Trump has accused news outlets of defaming him, and he has been found liable for defamation himself. His administration has targeted law firms he perceives as enemies, as well as international students deemed too critical of Israel or of U.S. foreign policy. Conservatives have accused social media platforms of suppressing free speech and have vowed to stop what they call online censorship. “There’s nothing in this particular political climate that’s shocking anymore,” said Jack Weinberg, who in the 1960s was a prominent free-speech activist and later worked for Greenpeace. (He’s also known for the phrase “Don’t trust anyone over 30,” although that’s not exactly how he said it.) “But it’s wrong,” he said of the verdict, “and it will have profound consequences.” The First Amendment protects free speech and the right to protest, and a landmark 1964 Supreme Court decision, New York Times v. Sullivan, strengthened those protections. To prevail in a defamation suit, a public figure must prove that the statement was false and was made with “actual malice,” meaning knowledge that the statement was false, or reckless disregard for its veracity. Carl W. Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, said that ruling intentionally raised the bar to win a defamation suit. “It’s extreme,” he said. “It’s meant to be.” Eugene Volokh, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, pointed to the history of that famous case. It concerned a 1960 ad in The Times that described police actions against civil rights demonstrators in Alabama as “an unprecedented wave of terror.” A police official sued the paper and won. But the Supreme Court overturned the verdict. The court ruled that protecting such speech was necessary, even if it contained errors, in order to ensure robust public debate. In a Greenpeace appeal, Mr. Volokh said, the evidence demonstrating whether Greenpeace’s statements were true or false would be crucial in evaluating the verdict, as would the question of whether Greenpeace’s statements were constitutionally protected expressions of opinion. Other issues that loom: What was permitted to be entered into evidence in the first place, and whether the instructions to the jury were sufficient. Then, he said, if the statements are found to be clearly false, is there enough evidence to show that Greenpeace engaged in “reckless falsehood, acts of so-called actual malice?” Any award for defamation chills free speech, Mr. Volokh added, whether against Greenpeace or against the Infowars host Alex Jones, who was found liable for more than $1 billion over his false statements about the murder of children at the Sandy Hook school shooting. In the Greenpeace case, the nine statements found by the jury to be defamatory referred to Energy Transfer and its subsidiary Dakota Access. One statement said that Dakota Access personnel had “deliberately desecrated burial grounds.” Another said that protesters had been met with “extreme violence, such as the use of water cannons, pepper spray, concussion grenades, Tasers, LRADs (Long Range Acoustic Devices) and dogs, from local and national law enforcement, and Energy Transfer partners and their private security.” Other statements were more general: “For months, the Standing Rock Sioux have been resisting the construction of a pipeline through their tribal land and waters that would carry oil from North Dakota’s fracking fields to Illinois.” The protests unfolded over months, from mid-2016 to early 2017, attracting tens of thousands of people from around the world, and were widely documented by news crews and on social media. Janet Alkire, chairwoman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, argued that Greenpeace’s statements were true and not defamatory. “Energy Transfer’s false and self-serving narrative that Greenpeace manipulated Standing Rock into protesting DAPL is patronizing and disrespectful to our people,” she said in a statement, using an abbreviation for the Dakota Access Pipeline. She said that “scenes of guard dogs menacing tribal members” were publicly available “on the news and on the internet.” Videos of the incidents in question weren’t shown at the trial. Everett Jack Jr. of the firm Davis, Wright Tremaine, the main lawyer for Greenpeace, declined to discuss why. The 1,172-mile pipeline, priced at $3.7 billion when announced, has been operating since 2017. It carries crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois. During the trial, some arguments hinged on whether the pipeline crossed Standing Rock’s land, or how to define tribal land. The pipeline is just outside the borders of the reservation but crosses what the tribe calls unceded land that it had never agreed to give up. There was also debate about whether tribal burial grounds were harmed during construction. Experts working for the tribe found that was the case, but experts brought in by Energy Transfer did not. Even if a statement was false, Mr. Cole said, a defendant cannot be held liable if they had a basis for believing it. He also predicted that the penalty would likely be reduced on appeal if not overturned. Martin Garbus, a veteran First Amendment lawyer, led a delegation of lawyers to North Dakota to observe the trial. The lawyers have said that the jury was biased against the defendants and that the trial should have been moved to another county. He expressed concern that an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court could be used to overturn Times v. Sullivan. He noted that Justice Clarence Thomas has called for the Supreme Court to reconsider that case. But Mr. Cole, Mr. Tobias and other experts said they did not expect the court to reconsider Times v. Sullivan. Greenpeace has said previously that the size of the damages could force the organization to shut down its U.S. operations. The lawsuit named three Greenpeace entities, but it centered on the actions of Greenpeace Inc., based in Washington, which organizes campaigns and protests in the United States and was found liable for more than $400 million. A second organization, Greenpeace Fund, a fund-raising arm, was found liable for about $130 million. A third group, Greenpeace International, based in Amsterdam, was found liable for the same amount. That group said its only involvement was signing a letter, along with several hundred other signatories, calling on banks to halt loans for the pipeline. Earlier this year, Greenpeace International filed a countersuit in the Netherlands against Energy Transfer. That lawsuit was brought under a European Union directive designed to fight what are known as SLAPP suits, or strategic lawsuits against public participation — legal actions designed to stifle critics. (State law in North Dakota, where Energy Transfer brought its case against Greenpeace, doesn’t have anti-SLAPP provisions.) The next hearing in the Netherlands case is in July.

The Federal Reserve’s key inflation measure rose more than expected in February while consumer spending also posted a smaller-than-projected increase, the Commerce Department reported Friday. The core personal consumption expenditures price index showed a 0.4% increase for the month, the biggest monthly gain since January 2024, putting the 12-month inflation rate at 2.8%. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for respective numbers of 0.3% and and 2.7%. Core inflation excludes volatile food and energy prices and is generally considered a better indicator of long-term inflation trends. In the all-items measure, the price index rose 0.3% on the month and 2.5% from a year ago, both in line with forecasts. At the same time, the Bureau of Economic Analysis report showed that consumer spending accelerated 0.4% for the month, below the 0.5% forecast. That came as personal income posted a 0.8% rise, against the estimate for 0.4%. Stock market futures briefly moved lower following the release, as did Treasury yields. Federal Reserve officials focus on the PCE inflation reading as they consider it a broader measure that also adjusts for changes in consumer behavior and places less of an emphasis on housing than the Labor Department’s consumer price index. Shelter costs have been one of the stickier elements of inflation and rose 0.3% in the PCE measure. “It looks like a ‘wait-and-see’ Fed still has more waiting to do,” said Ellen Zentner, chief economic strategist at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. “Today’s higher-than-expected inflation reading wasn’t exceptionally hot, but it isn’t going to speed up the Fed’s timeline for cutting interest rates, especially given the uncertainty surrounding tariffs.” Recommended

The silent season is drawing to a close. All winter, there was little birdsong to lift my heart. The occasional caw of a crow, the chickadee-dee-dee of a chickadee, the big song of the little Carolina wren that now stays on our Pennsylvania farm all winter. But no courtship call of great horned owls, no wood thrush or Baltimore oriole. Still, I rejoiced in the music that remained. I just heard the first notes of our first returning songbird, though, a red-winged blackbird, and the snowdrops have begun to poke out of the ground. The other day, I moved last fall’s potted tulips and hyacinth from the unheated side of the barn to the warmth of the garden room to force their blooms. But the vegetable garden is an icy mud puddle and the flower beds, still mulched with shredded leaves, show little signs of life. Boxwood is covered in burlap and snow fence is draped around trees and shrubs to prevent deer from devouring them. Those deer, which have changed from the color of milk chocolate to dark, break through our makeshift deterrents anyway and eat the yew, euonymus, arborvitae, and this winter, even the holly. Squirrels race around adding to their larders, but the chipmunks are nowhere to be seen yet. They’re in their dens I suppose, as are the opossum, raccoons and the bears, too. Once I longed for a greenhouse, but now I, too, wish to hibernate in winter, to take time off from sowing, potting and nurturing. To walk in snowy woods and observe animal tracks, study ice patterns on the pond, to be one with the season. I want to read by the fire and peruse garden catalogs, imagining what next year’s garden will be like, expecting, as all gardeners do, that next year will be better than the last. As Vita Sackville-West wrote in her poem “The Garden”: The gardener dreams his special own alloy Of possible and the impossible. But what is possible anymore? As I reflect on last year’s abysmal season, I wonder how I will adapt to the changes I witness. A year ago, winter was so warm that shrubs hardly died back and, last spring, dripped with foliage, a welcome sight but not normal. Spring was so hot I missed that lovely, cool, window for transplanting. I didn’t know when to plant early season, cold-hardy vegetables, certainly not in 85 degrees, or when to set out tender plants. “After danger of frost,” is common wisdom, but when is that now? My Plant Hardiness Zone shifted recently because the average coldest temperature in my area is now three degrees higher than it was in 2012. But even that new guidance didn’t help me. Mid-May felt like mid-June. Then, we had hail on May 29. I planted poppies in April anyway (they like cool weather) but the seeds were washed away by floods, which can now stretch here from April through October. Between June and November, we had a drought. The grass was brown. Dogwood and tulip poplar lost their leaves in July. My vegetable garden resembled a cracked riverbed, the soil so hard that weeding was nearly impossible. Editors’ Picks Is There a Least Bad Alcohol? Everybody Knew His Name: ‘Norm!’ Timothée Chalamet Is Living a Knicks Fan’s Dream Streams ran dry, so for the first time in 36 years I saw deer wade into the pond to drink. Little food was available for them, so they sauntered up to our garage and ate the deer-resistant lavender. On my walks in the forest, I was struck by that lack of undergrowth, particularly a huge patch of Canadian Wood Nettle, a North America native that is a host plant for Red Admiral and Eastern Comma butterflies. Chanterelles never fruited in their usual spots. I worried that our spring would run dry. Pennsylvania saw record wildfires in fall. Two lilacs, which normally appear in spring, bloomed in October, and in late November I was still harvesting what little I did manage to grow. All this reminds me of a radio program called “Piano Puzzler” that my husband and I listen to on Saturday mornings. The composer Bruce Adolphe rewrites a familiar tune in the style of a classical composer. He changes the tune’s tempo, harmony or mode and contestants try to name the tune and composer. Imagine “Hey Jude” in the style of Brahms. Somewhere in my brain the tune sounds familiar, yet something is off, the music is disorienting. Occasionally, I guess correctly. Often, not. Gardening in climate change is the same: confusing, with a lot of guessing. What’s a home gardener to do? “The only predictable thing is that it is going to be unpredictable.” said Sonja Skelly, director of education at Cornell Botanic Gardens in Ithaca, N.Y. “It’s been crazy up here, too.” Last spring was hot in Ithaca as well, so the vegetable gardener started planting two weeks before the May 31 frost-free date. Then came extreme temperature fluctuations, but the plants set out earlier did better because they got established. Those planted on the target date were stunted and had a poor growing season. “A good lesson,” Dr. Skelly said. Row covers, which allow gardeners to get plants in earlier and grow them later in the season, are “going to be really important in climates like ours,” she said. Cover crops like millet, sorghum, and black-eyed peas have been successful at the botanic gardens. They improve water retention, decrease weeds, reduce erosion and limit negative microorganisms in soil. The birds love them, Dr. Skelly said. She recommended planting together what the Haudenosaunee people call the three sisters: corn, beans and squash. This system produces a better per-hectare yield than any monoculture cropping system, she said. Drip irrigation is another solution, Dr. Skelly said. “It adds moisture where it’s needed, at the roots,” she said. Water is released slowly, stays put, and doesn’t run off like hand watering or using sprinklers. “Observe, take notes, ask questions, seek out answers,” Dr. Skelly advised. “What are the neighbors seeing?” Learn by going to local botanic gardens, public gardens and nature centers, which have been working on this problem for a while now. “Keep the cycle of information flowing, talking with friends and family and neighbors as a way to help us figure it out. That’s so important,” she said. Dr. Skelly believes it’s crucial for home gardeners to really understand their plants. “Maybe climate change will be the way to know our gardens far better,” she said. “We have to.” I’ve long depended on experts to teach me how to garden responsibly. To help, not harm, the environment. I plant a diverse range of plants, including natives for pollinators, and have learned to celebrate native weeds like fleabane. I practice companion planting. I don’t spray pesticides or insecticides and, instead of synthetic fertilizers, use compost or make my own out of comfrey or stinging nettle. I wish I could buy plants in something other than plastic. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT But the more I ponder gardening in the time of climate change, the more I believe we home gardeners are going to have to figure out many solutions for ourselves. So much of gardening is trial and error and erratic weather patterns mean we’ll have to experiment even more, to do our own studies. In essence, we must become citizen-scientists of our own vegetable patches and flower beds. Cornell Botanic Gardens has a climate change demonstration garden, but, really, we all do. None of us has been through this before. And in the end, we’re all in this together, navigating a strange new world of digging in soil and growing things, each trying as we might to contribute to a new way of gardening in a changing world.