Blackberry Winter Anxiety

Rain.

Cold.

A bit of sun.

Rain again.

More cold.

I need to walk with a camera, and not just with a dog.

The thing about gray winter days

is that every now then -- actually occasionally, only now that I think about it, truly rarely -- a sunny day or a sunny afternoon or even just a sunny hour pops up, reminding me why I feel imprisoned.

This was yesterday.

Today was gray.

Me-too Weather Report

The Trees Delete Themselves Inside a Fog-Sphere
by Francis PongeTranslated by Karen Volkman

In the fog which surrounds the trees, the leaves are stripped—leaves defaced already by slow oxidation, deadened by the sap's out-seeping for flowers' and fruits' gain, since the harsh heats of August made of them a less.

In the bark, vertical furrows crease and slit where dampness drains to the earth's base, indifferent to the living citizens of the trunk.

Flowers scattered, fruit conferred. Since youth, this relinquishing of breathing attributes and body parts has become for the trees a standard practice.

I will not write "after drought"

"rain has come" because, although some rain has fallen (for two nights and two days, off and then on), it has not been anywhere enough to make a dent in ending the drought which doubtless has resulted in the demise of plant and animal, some inconvenience for humans in water and fire limits, even, perhaps, the signal of something larger than any of us or even of this place, but I will celebrate the rain, however intermittent, and the fog, the humidity lingering in the air, reminding me of fecundity even in its absence.

Welcome, stranger, may you make a home here again.

According to the United States Drought Monitor, my community is categorized as D4 (Exceptional Drought), the most severe rating.

Blackberry Winter

Thirty-nine degrees on May 5.
Strong wind.
Lows of 44 predicted for the next two nights.
Everything makes sad music.

Your choice: lyrics or instrumental.
Either paints the mood blue.

The Forecast Gets It Wrong

No rain, it said.

No rain today, it says now.

Tell that to the people who ran errands in it, like me.

Tell that to people who bought air return filters and left them in the car so they wouldn't get wet, like me.

Tell that to the woman whose pricey camera, rented for a week, lies ignored on the dining room table.

At least I can look back at One-a-Day Photos of 2015 to find color.

Nine months in, three to go.

Surely, the rain will break before the year is up.

Right?

Sometimes Predictions Come True

I.
Yesterday.

US National Weather Service Nashville Tennessee

To quote our friend @NashSevereWx, I have no words of warmth to give. I am sorry. We must forecast these awful things. Alas, the cold front has just passed through Nashville. The mercury shall drop and drop and drop. The rain shall fall, shall change to an icy mess. The roads shall freeze and bring their silent havok. And still the mercury shall drop and drop and drop. As I foretell these terrible deeds, it is still a pleasant 52°. By this time tomorrow morning, it will be 23° with anywhere from a sixth to a third of a foot of snow, ice pellets, and, the worst of all wintry deeds, freezing rain. Tomorrow night, nature shall deal perhaps its cruelest blow: a temperature of 7°. Indeed, William Shakespeare was most apt: "I, that did never weep, now melt with woe/That winter should cut off our spring-time so."

II.
Today. 

Let's Hear It for Gerridae!

I  Weather Report: High and Low Temperatures

• Nov 12 -- 44/33
• Nov 13 -- 35/23
• Nov 14 -- 33/19
• Nov 15 -- 46/19
• Nov 16 -- 51/37
• Nov 17 -- 53/21
• Nov 18 -- 30/15
• Nov 19 -- 48/15
• Nov 20 -- 53/26
• Nov 21 -- 57/26
• Nov 22 -- 62/39

II  Common Water Strider Nicknames

• magic bugs
• pond skaters
• skimmers
• water scooters
• water skeeters
• water skimmers
• water spiders
• Jesus bugs

III  Season

Year-round in the South. (Witness this Common Water Strider, one among many, in Abbo's Alley this afternoon.)

IV  Q&A

Q: How the heck do they protect themselves from extreme cold?

A: "They can crawl inside a plant stem when it gets too cold."

V  Personal Observation

Jeezus! Bugs!

Push Pull

July sun
pounds earth
sere, drying
up ponds
and yards
and woods
leaving me
longing for
rain, yet
July rain
maroons me
at home
where, I
wish sun
would break 
bring out
bugs swarming
refilled ponds.

Earth rejoices,
but I am
never satisfied.

There's Cold and Then There's *Cold*

Halfway around the lake, a woman and her Doberman caught up to me.

"Hi!" I called, unfolding myself from the icy moss where I had been lying (my favorite photographing position).

"Hi!" When she caught up to me, she said, "Do you live here? I mean, right at the lake?"

"Near enough."

"I've never been here in the snow before. I'm from Nebraska," she said.

Before we could pursue Nebraska or why she's here, we discovered two large coffee containers, still topped, sitting upright in the sand.

"Is there a garbage can nearby?"

"Yep. Look right over there on the other side of the beach," I said.

"If my child did this, I'd lecture her. Do people litter here often?"

"Oh yes, all the time. You wouldn't believe what I pull out of the lake."

After dumping the cups, we discussed the weather, of course. (Everyone has been discussing the weather. My Birmingham family and friends had challenges yesterday, and we've hit single digits more time this month than I remember in ten years here.)

"I heard the students complaining about the cold," she said. "They should come to Nebraska where the wind blows 30 miles an hour, and then they'll know cold!"

I asked if she had seen the footprints on the lake ice -- large ones, clearly a male's, with a love note by one of the footbridges and small ones -- child size -- across from the beach.

"We teach children in Nebraska that you don't walk on a lake or pond until the water has frozen all the way down to the bottom," she said.

"That sounds wise."

And with that, she and the Doberman continued on, into the woods.

There's cold and then there's cold. For her, it's wind in Nebraska's winter snow. For me, it was 20-something with 100% humidity in New Orleans.

But for Lake Cheston, cold is cold, and continued cold has meant myriad patterns of ice -- flowers, bubbles, sheets, striations, chains, beads. I'll take this cold anytime because it's so beautiful.

Tornado Warnings

The tornado siren blasted, and for once I heard it. I closed all the curtains, turned off the computer and the power strip and then unplugged it, and left the TV on so I could see (or hear) where the storm was tracking.

Then I waited.

At one point, after taking this video, I took shelter in the closet under the stairs while my cat hunkered flat under the futon.

What I saw frightened me, but it excited me, too -- not in the way daredevils are excited by imminent danger, but because of the awesome power and primitive beauty of hail and trees twisting in wind and lateral rain.

It's no wonder earlier peoples invented deities for thunder and lightning, for natural phenomena beyond their understanding and our control. I paid homage to the majesty of that same force.