Springtime

It appears almost certain that we are having here an early spring.  This morning I heard a White-Crowned Sparrow singing its little lungs out.  I live downtown, Gentle Reader, so you will appreciate what a special pleasure this is for me.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7v7dt_GTd0 It is sunny today and they expect highs of between twelve and seventeen (for my American Gentle Reader and my older Canadian Gentle Reader who never got off her stubborn butt and learn the metric system that would be, in Fahrenheit, between 54 and 62 degrees.  Here's an idea if you would like to apply your math skills and keep those neurosynapses going in our old age: add the temperature in centigrade to 32, multiply the sum by 9 then divide by 5 and you will have the Fahrenheit equivalent.  Trust me, darling, it works every time-yes, I'm sure you've heard that line before-, just like sipping water from the wrong side of the glass while reciting the Lord's Prayer cures hick-ups.  I actually made up the part about the Lord's Prayer but, hey, it's worth a try, dontchathink?)

The crocuses are also blooming along with the snowdrops that have been around since New Years, and the winter jasmine, and the hellebore, the witch hazel...
Just to make this post less boring and to throw in a little eye candy, here are some images for you:











Far be it from me to want to pee in your granola, but while we are enjoying this lovely and earnestly early spring let us not forget that we are in the midst of a very strange and menacing process of climate change being caused by global warming.  While getting silly and barmy over some pretty flowers, birdies and warm weather we are also lurching into some previously uncharted territory.  The scientists are not optimistic about the outcome and perhaps we should not forget about the great tsunami that wiped out the lives of hundreds of thousands in the Indian Ocean in 2004.  As the water went out at an incredibly low tide people ran out to pick up the stranded fish, laughing about the easy money they would be making at the market when suddenly the water turned on them with a vengeance and they would never reach market again.

That said, Gentle Reader, let us still celebrate and enjoy the beauty with which we are being gifted, while redoubling our efforts to lower our carbon footprint and advocate for a lowering of the rising global temperature.  Which means putting an end to fossil fuels and pipelines and oil, coal and natural gas extraction and going whole hog on developing and perfecting renewable energy and all of us turning vegetarian, or at least a lot of us. Our children and our grandchildren, should they survive this mess we have bequeathed them, will thank us for generations to come.