Starter Smallholders

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking forward to seeing the green grass and first flowers about now. As I sit here with snow falling heavily outside the window, it is evident that I was premature. However, I enjoyed reading in this article, via the infrequent farmer that the weather is getting warmer, and that Britons should be prepared to plant more Mediterranean plants in their gardens. If that is the case, then by the time I am seventy I can expect the weather in Latvia to be roughly equivalent to my early childhood in Yorkshire. I could be so attuned to Latvian expectations by then that I will not believe the evidence around me and will put the feeling down to the onset of senility, doggedly planting nothing before May and wondering why the soil is so warm. I hope that the irony will not be lost on an older me - I currently plan on planting things around a mental timetable that is based more closely on British weather than local conditions, and have lost far more plants to frost than anyone would be prepared to admit to.
I hate to be a pessimist, but I would put my money on those doom-and-gloom scientists who say that everything will become more extreme - and then Latvian winters will just get even colder, and the summers, which are currently pleasant, will become undesirably hot and dry.