It may be the beginning of spring here in Southwestern Pennsylvania, but damn is it cold outside.
Many, in this part of the country, have re-calculated the seasons:
– winter spans the time between Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day
– spring goes from February 14 to Memorial Day
– summer begins the last Monday in May and rolls on to Labor Day
– fall starts in the early weeks of September and ends with Thanksgiving in November.
But if today was our ‘over-the-hump day’, we were all being laughed at by the weather gods that live in them there clouds.

Also, I’ve been trying to figure out a correlation between latitude/longitude and highs/lows and it’s clear that many factors contribute to temperature and geographic coordinate are not necessarily great indicators of warm or cold. What follows is a list of four cities, I’ve tracked today.
– At 40o North Latitude, Pittsburgh is the southern most city of the four. Today’s low was 12.
– At 43o North, Toronto is the next southern most city and its low today was 15.
– At 44o North, Saint-Émilion, France had a low of 38 this morning – go figure. This southwestern French town made it onto the list, because I follow a couple of British expats who run a vineyard – Clos Vieux Rochers – outside of town. And their recent photographs show a region free of snow or they record activities – pruning, laying cement – I associate with mild spring temperatures.
– And finally at 46o North, Sault Ste Marie registered a low of 11 this morning.
Saint-Émilion is the outlier and I want to know why.

The image is my bay-leaf plant with its copper dragonfly hovering above the green leaves. The temperature was freezing, but the sun was shining, so I took the pot outside, positioned it in front of the angel and photographed it. I wanted to pretend that, on my favorite holiday, winter was on its way gone.