Sunday Sunlight

Taken in February of this year.  It looks absolutely nothing like this here now...the snow that was still on the ground on December 21st is completely gone because we've had highs in the 40's and low 50's for the past several days!  This is the warmest December on record for these mountains, although the nights have been cold with lows in the 20's.  We've even been under a "Red Flag Warning," which means the wildfire danger is extremely high due to high winds (70 mph gusts) and dangerously low humidity.  I've lived here all my life, but I've never seen weather like this in December. 

Completely Crazy

O wind, where have you been,
That you blow so sweet
Among the violets
Which blossom at your feet.
The honeysuckle waits
For Summer and for heat
But violets in the chilly Spring
Make the turf so sweet.

Christina Georgina Rossetti

The violets and the other flowers which are blooming right now (not many; just daffodils and a few tulips) are soon to covered under a not so comfortable blanket of snow and buffeted by not so sweet winds. We got a mix of rain, snow and sleet yesterday, nothing today, but the weatherman has predicted that the mountains where I live will get 8 inches to a foot and a half of snow tomorrow. At least my apple trees haven't blossomed out yet, thank goodness. Snow is not unusual for April up here, but usually we don't get so much of it.

I wish the weather would go back to behaving the way it did when Ms. Rossetti (1830 - 1894) lived. I'm sure spring was still unpredictable back then, but I know it wasn't as crazy as it is now!

March - In Like a Lamb, Out Like a Lion!?

Isn't this the reverse of what it's supposed to be like?

Strange Behavior

Autumn is behaving very strangely up here. Some trees have turned, like the one in the photo above, some have turned and dropped their leaves. Some didn't turn colors, their leaves just turned brown and they dropped them, while others are hanging on to their brown, dry leaves. Then there are the Dogwoods; some of their leaves turned colors about a month ago, while the rest of the leaves remained green. Most of them are still green today. I can't remember an Autumn as strange as this one...I hope this isn't the way Autumn is going to behave from now on. I find it very disconcerting!

Sunday Sunsets

I have a gazillion photos of sunsets, so I thought I'd start posting one every Sunday. 

Spring is still being very moody, warm one day, freezing temperatures and snow the next.  Spring has always been capricious, but this one has been more than that, it has been absolutely crazy.   So I've been kept busy covering cold tender plants, then uncovering them, then covering them again, and so on...

Weather is crazy, the animals are behaving badly and people are acting like they're insane.  (More about insane people in a later post).

I think the line from Bob Dylan's 'Things Have Changed' sums it up perfectly: "People are crazy and times are strange."