This is not a complaint, so I hope the weather gods don’t take it as one. But the human body is more comfortable when it stays in one temperature range for a season. When it’s 70 degrees one day and 40 the next, it does something to a body. In short, it makes it shiver, then roast, then shiver again.

Today the high is forecast to be 80 degrees. This is February 23, I’ll point out. Daffodils are blooming. Snowdrops and hellebores have been out for weeks. By Saturday we may have snow.

Perhaps this is just a cycle, a La Niña phenomenon. But  unseasonable winter warmth — and these crazy yo-yo cycles, too — now carry with them a tinge of guilt and fear. In their balminess are denuded forests,  smoke clouds, flooded homes, loss. 

I love warm weather. But not with these strings attached. 

(This photo was taken in Washington, D.C., on January 24, 2023.)