Our run of not half bad weekends continues…The sun is out in a mostly clear sky. The temperature is already threatening to pass 60 degrees on this midwinter Saturday morning.

As I sat here musing this morning, I was struck again by the amount of green I still see through the windows in my kitchen. The oaks around the house here are looking a bit bedraggled  but they are still holding on to an impressive amount of leaves for this late in the season. It always strikes me as slightly strange how those very same trees, by holding those few leaves each year, moderate the micro-climate around this old house. The grass on the ground is still more than half green while the grasses out in the field behind the house are all brown.

The lantana out the sink window has bloomed this entire winter. Angel Trumpets were blooming just last week. So were the azaleas by the front porch. The begonias in the tub at the end of the front walk haven’t stopped booming in the decade and a half we have been here.

This rainy winter has been playing havoc with the dead tree limbs though. The yard need a good going over to clear the limbs that have fallen this year so far but the ground is so saturated I hate to tramp around enough to pick them all up. I’ll probably wait for dryer weather (if it comes). I know it looks a bit trashy, but I didn’t move out to the edge of a sub-rural town to keep house beautiful and try to win the yard of the week.

If the sun holds I think I need to get out and catch a dose of vitamin D today before we go back to the rainy weekday pattern of weather.

Oh, and for the record, both of my apple trees still have their leaves this year…Poor things never have figured this climate out.