The first time I posted the first crocuses on this blog was in 2003. And then a lot of times since then. It’s therapeutic; I may be a Canadian and happy about it, but damn I hate winter. Here at Canada’s bottom left corner we don’t get the brutal cold but also we don’t get much winter light, so sun on petals is a morale-booster. And do we ever need one this particular winter.

The little guy above is awfully cute, sneaking into the sun. The flowers are early this year; they usually don’t show till sometime in February. Welcome!

What a shitty winter. At least that asshole isn’t in my face all over the Internet. I look forward to never writing and rarely reading about him again. The problem remains of how to run a democracy when one of its political wings is entirely oblivious to both the value of truth and the essentially damaging nature of falsehood; good luck with that.

Then there’s Covid. I guess we’ve started to win, but it’s a long haul. It looks like, if the vaccine supplies arrive on schedule, I should get my first dose in May or so. Like everyone else, I’m feeling stir-crazy and music-starved and grumpy at my fellow citizens and generally inclined to be less charitable than I should be.

Fortunately spring beckons, albeit distantly

Speaking of being music-starved, it looks like, with any luck, there might be concerts this fall. Given that almost every musician in the world is both broke and stir-crazy, I expect there to be a lot of concerts. Let’s make a resolution to watch the announcements and open our wallets and get up off our sofas and into real rooms with real music played by real people before the year’s over, a lot more than once.

This last crocus pic has a story. I grabbed the camera, screwed on the trusty old 35mm/F1.4, and got down on my knees. Only something was wrong, it wouldn’t let me change the aperture, I worried that my lovely old lens might be wearing out, then (after I’d taken a few shots anyhow) noticed that I’d accidentally tripped the Fujifilm’s “Auto Mode”, which is very opinionated. It does not care to hear your opinion about aperture or recording mode, and captures JPG-only, no RAW for you.

That’s not a picture I’d take, but I’m not gonna say the camera got it all wrong.

Hang in, we’ll get through this; most of us anyhow.