We have had a cold spring in our area. Winter has held on to the temperatures and brought us snow flurries, while the song birds are heralding spring in trees which are budding while flowers have appeared in fields and flower beds.
So when the day seemed even remotely springlike, I took my camera and walked the paths at Cox Arboretum. The weather may not be springing, but I tried to put a little spring in my walk.
I did see my first caterpillar, ant and (my favorite) bee of the season – welcome signs of spring.
In the Orthodox Church we frequently pray for “seasonable weather” which perhaps in our modern minds shaped by media weather reports translates into average or normal weather, though in our hearts we want it to be at least fair weather, preferable good or nice.
But there is an old Arab saying which has it that “All sun makes a desert.” We need the rain, clouds and cool weather to make our gardens grow.
“Unseasonably.” This to me is a strange word in the vocabulary of media meteorologists. In the middle of winter they might say on the coldest night of the year that it is “unseasonably cold.” They seem to mean it is below average in temperature, but in what other season except for winter would we have those bone chilling temperatures?
We seem to have had an unseasonably cold spring this year, though I don’t know if the weather data would affirm that or whether we have been well within what is normal for this time of the year.
A little ditty, I remember from my youth: “Whether the weather be fine, or whether the weather be not, it’s not a matter of weather or not. Whatever the weather, we’ll weather the weather, whether we like it or not.” Searching on the Internet, I see that limerick has many avatars, none of them exactly as I remember it.
You can find all of my photos from my walk at 2018-4-26 Cox Arboretum. Despite the weather, the birds keep singing every morning.
Fraternized 