The New Year: A Shuffling of the Cards . . .
Climate change, as I have perceived it, can best be described by me in this way: Picture a pack of standard playing cards divided into the four separate suits. Now shuffle the pack just once or twice. The integrity of the pack remains mostly intact, but there are a few cards of one suit or another blended into all of the rest. So it seems with the once stable four seasons. The prevailing weather patterns of Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter have been shuffled a bit so that we may see a week of eighty degree days during the middle of March, snow on a flowering May garden, a stretch of chilly rainy days in late June, and snow again; this time frosting the bright turning leaves of October.
January 2013 began cool and damp in New York City. Thick fog and rain segued into sunny days reaching into the low fifties. From the start, a small cluster of daffodil bulbs sprouted in our rear courtyard garden, grew to nearly half a foot in height, until subfreezing temperatures and snow arrived near month’s end. I documented this progress in the following photos . . .
The climatic cards have certainly been shuffled so far this year. Perhaps there is a joker in the deck!
– rPs 01 29 2012
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