Freeze Warning

     Spring officially arrives this weekend, according to the calendar and the passing
of the vernal equinox.  Unfortunately, Mother Nature does not always agree with our
time schedule, and she is a particularly fickle and temperamental  regulator of the
weather here in the middle of the country.  The center of our continent is where the
cold, dry air from the north is forever battling the warm, humid air coming up from
the gulf, which creates our dramatic weather changes and storms, including more
tornadoes than anywhere else in the world.  This spring is another example of the
fickle nature of our weather.  We began with an early warm-up, which soon started
the growing season in earnest, turning the lawns green and convincing the flowering
trees, shrubs and spring bulbs, that it was time to put on their show.  They were all
in full bloom when we got the news yesterday, that we would have a few nights of
below freezing temperatures, along with some snow showers.
     Such betrayals of our promising springs are a fairly common occurrence in this
region.  Everything is beautiful one day, and the next morning it is all brown and lost
for another year.   The loss becomes all the more poignant as we reach an age which
makes us question how many more shows of spring we are likely to see.
     I did go out last night and stumble around in the twilight, picking a few daffodils,
tulips, forsythia and magnolia blossoms, to look at them a bit more closely again
before they were gone.  Today I photographed some of them.  Perhaps I will use
them as subjects for paintings, or perhaps not.  Life and Spring are both unpredictable.
Mother Nature doesn't offer us any guarantees.