Weak though this winter was, it does not want to die

Yesterday morning, I stepped out the door into the driveway to pick up the newspaper when I saw something that I had not witnessed since I arrived home from the east coast. There were puddles in the driveway, and they were liquid. On all the other mornings since I had returned home, I found the puddles frozen, often solid, top to bottom. 

Usually, they melted before the day ended, just as the snow was doing, but come the next morning, they had always refrozen.

I also saw some pussy willows, their fluffy baby kitty cats expanding rapidly towards the green into which they will soon disappear.

"Do you think its finally going to be spring?" a friendly man at Family Restaurant who introduced himself as Rob asked. Yes, I answered, and I told him about the liquid puddles, but I did not think to mention the pussy willows.

And then, in the afternoon, it started to snow. Big flakes. At the usual time, I got into the car and headed toward Metro Cafe. The external temperature read 32 degrees.

For you in the celsius world, that would be "0."

"Bill!" Carmen exclaimed, when she saw me at the window, "it's winter again!"

Then she, Baranson and Jason posed for Through the Window Metro Study, #22.39.

I am pretty certain that, by this time next week, MOMA in New York will have discovered this image and my financial problems will be solved forever. The money will flow in and Margie and I will spend a lot of time in Mexico, at last able to spend the remaining portion of our lives fishing under the sun, alongside poor people who have spent their entire lives fishing.

Carmen was born in Mexico. She gets that one.

We often laugh about it - the people who work hard all their lives so that they can save up enough money to retire to Mexico and fish.

I drove on, sipping, and saw this lady walking with an umbrella on Church Road.

And at another coffee shop, one that I often frequented before Metro Cafe opened and still sometimes do on Sundays when Metro is closed, I saw someone else buying coffee, or maybe soft ice cream.

I am certain, come the hot days of summer, that, despite our loyalty to Carmen and her coffee, we will still come to Little Miller's for ice cream now and then.

This was a weak, warm, winter. One of the warmest and weakest that I ever remember here. Maybe the warmest and weakest. I don't know. I haven't seen the final statistics. Plus, as warm and weak as it was, sometimes, even much colders winters are interrupted by big, huge, long-lasting South Pacific storms that blow in hard, bring driving rain and temperatures up to 50.

Those storms came, but not with quite the same heat and intensity, so I do know if this brought might have constrained the average from rising as high as it otherwise would have. But most of this winter, it was mighty warm for this area.

Sometimes, the warmest winters are the most reluctant to depart.

Now, as to that button, I had planned to put it up with this post, but I got sidetracked on a different site, where another photographer who thinks that he knows more than he does disparaged pocket cameras and any need to ever use them if one has a DSLR.

I had to defend the honor of the pocket camera.

It's true - technically speaking, all of these pictures would have turned out a bit better if I had used a DSLR instead of a pocket camera, but that is beside the point.

Thanks to that argument, I have no time left to figure out how to put up the button, so it will have to wait.

Comments

[twain12]

i feel for you, we had an unusually early spring. The weather is changing that's for sure

[Shaela]

We have been hit by a cold spell down here in LA as well. I like it. You should come visit and fish at the pier and take more photos of Hollywood cats. :) Your thoughts on fishing and retirement and the poor are very true. I had never thought about it that way. I say just go ahead and go fish. Why waste time saving up for it. Seems unnecessary.