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CLIMATE-CHANGE DOUBTER, are you? Come goggle at the flower baskets on my Center Island deck, and then we’ll talk.

Two manifestations of climate change that I’ve witnessed since acquiring Nuthatch Cabin in the fall of 2003: (A) rip-snorting winter gales, previously rare, that have become commonplace in the past five years, setting my tall Doug firs dancing a mad tarantella; and (B) snowless winters with temperatures rarely dipping to freezing.

Admittedly, the second phenomenon has really only manifested here in the past two years, hardly qualifying as a scientific sampling. But some results have been startling.

Case in point, the Mutant Colossal Fuchsias of Chinook Way.

Chinook Way, in case you don’t recall, is the high-faluting name for the one-lane, dead-end gravel road in front of my island hermitage.

For some years I have nurtured fuchsia baskets on my deck in the warmer months. Once or twice I retired them to the woodshed come December, and one year the plants came back to life in the spring. But usually winter frosts have their way and I yank the brittle, dead vines out by the roots to begin afresh with new fuchsia starts in my wooden baskets come April.

This past winter, however, serious frosts never came. My fuchsias shivered a bit, but bloomed nonstop. Come spring, they also started growing like crabgrass after a good rain. One is now a healthy yard tall. Another has spread drooping arms like a giant Pacific octopus.

“You’re growing fuchsia trees!” daughter Lillian declared on her latest visit.

Next winter, if Jack Frost takes another season off the job, the question might not be whether my fuchsias will freeze. But will they manage the tarantella?