When I woke up at dawn it was already 67º, and heading for 75°, with a forecast of t-storms and gusts over 40 mph.  The sunrise was duly spectacular, though I haven’t quite mastered my cam’s settings yet.  This weather rollercoaster due to climate change is bizarre.  Remember, it’s winter, and I’m supposed to be hibernating!  Sure, I’ll take warm over freezing anytime, but in its proper season.  I wonder what the natural world makes of it.  We’re already losing major species to extinction as I write.  Too bad they don’t get a vote.

As if 64º isn’t warm enough for you in January, tomorrow is supposed to be (wait for it) 76º!!  I am not making this up.  I’m supposed to be hibernating!  I feel like I should go work outside, but my inner calendar says Sleeep!  So confusing.

Still, it’s better than everywhere else in the country–severe storms, giant hail, tornadoes, torrential downpours, snow, apocalypse, you name it.  We’re like the eye.

Misu has no such worries; she just snoozes, or watches kitty IMAX.

It’s headed for 60º, so it must be… Knoxville in January!  The only gardening to do is some indoor transplanting.  The only plants left to photograph are indoors as well.  Same for animals, aside from that lone mouse who wasn’t long for this world.  It’s too soon to order the first spring seeds for transplants.  I’ve already memorized the seed catalogs.  It’s hard to hibernate when it’s so springlike!  What’s a gardener to do?  A weird problem to have.  Misu says, what problem?

When national/world news keeps degenerating deeper and more dystopian by the minute, what do I turn to for hope?  The plant world, of course!!  That is, as long as it’s allowed to exist.  It’s not looking good for this earth, unless we get this depraved lunatic out.  But in the meantime, back to more mundane, manageable matters.

I’m really grasping for photo subjects.  I think this year’s horticultural goal will be to plant more to include winter/wildlife interest.  This place is so bare and unnatural in winter.  And we don’t get out much, so this is it.  The challenge is to find more in less.  There’s always a new angle.  So here’s yet another view of the kitchen window!  With a new pet hyacinth!  Like I said, grasping.

Now that the junkies are out next door, and the landlord is busy dealing with all the damage and crap they left behind, we can finally begin to venture outside in our own yard without a delinquent audience.  That event right there got the year off to a much better start.  I can visit my baby trees without navigating around lurching drug dealers and their dog crap.  E can walk around the yard without starers and stalkers.  Sometimes just the absence of something is a really big deal.  You think it can’t happen, and then it does.

Just imagine the joyful day when trump is gone.  Just getting back to normality will be a huge relief.  For now, you just breathe in each tiny personal victory as it comes, and don’t lose all hope.  Then, if spring returns again, and you live to see it, that’s a big bonus!

Early this morning I was awakened by a loud noise, and found Misu chasing a mouse through the house!  I have no idea how it got in, but I’m just glad it wasn’t a rat.  Misu’s mouser instincts rebooted, I’m happy to say, but mostly just to play with it.  It may still be in here somewhere!  Time will tell.  I only have one half the equation for photo evidence, but just as well, the other half could be gory.

I can finally get fairly good closeups with my new phone cam!  I just need to tweak it a little.  Here’s a tiny blue flower in January.  And not to be outdone, my pet tulip.

Even in more winter-like conditions, many perennials and even annuals are staying green into January down here, and spring bulbs are poking up everywhere.  Here are parsley and columbine.  Up north all these would be frozen or dormant by now.  Or maybe not, with climate change.

And look at this tulip!  (Okay, I cheated on that one–greenhouse-forced.)

At the other end of the food chain, here is a dog-breed I can sink my teeth into–E’s dogs-in-a-blanket!  Notice I didn’t say pigs.  Unlike the dogs-pooping-on-our-lawn variety.  Or the hillbillies-peeing-on-same.  Not as high up the chain as hot dogs, IMO.  (Or as edible.)  Maybe why they’re evicted, yay!

My son spent yesterday afternoon and evening with us, and Misu approved.  Here she is helping him do computer stuff.  It was so adorable, I’m posting redundant photos of them schmoozing.

Here are: E’s latest batch of challah and an erev still life.

It’s like a rainy spring day, with more such days on the way.  Lots of spring bulbs are coming up.  In early January!  There’s frustratingly little to be done outside this time of year, though.  It’s a day for napping, which is what my son is doing in the office!

Down the driveway, the long-empty overpriced double-wide appears to be finally occupied, judging by all the frenzied guys literally flinging large furniture at the house from a U-Haul in the rain.

Across the street, potential buyers of the newly built house can be seen rolling their eyes at all the mattresses, sofas, and other trash strewn along the road by the evicted neighborhood drug dealers.

Welcome to redneckville.  As long as more druggies and derelicts don’t move in, that’s the best we can hope for.  You learn to appreciate the little things, like being able to walk outside in your own garden without being confronted by sleaze, disrespect, and dog crap.

In better news, Misu seems to have recovered from her Montezuma’s revenge for cats.  She’s back to begging for food and fake-attacking squirrels through the window.  She’s sitting next to my laptop as I write this.

Getting the drug dealers cleared out next door seems like a good omen for the start of the new year.  You can’t imagine all the huge crap (as well as people) coming out of that one small house.  The woods down the street are now lined with ruined sofas, furniture, mattress, boxspring, probably the kitchen sink.  Not to mention all the plastic bottles they threw out in the woods.  I guess that’s how they take out the trash in Tennessee.  No doubt the squatters will set up shop down there now.  But at least they’re no longer performing lewd acts in our faces or on our lawn, or smuggling in assault weapons.  The joys of redneck “culture”.

On a sadder note, Misu the cat is strangely sick today.  I can’t figure out what caused it.  When I was suddenly, mysteriously very sick recently, she stayed glued to me the whole time, knowing something was wrong.  So after I cleaned up after her, I wrapped her up on my bed, where I can keep an eye on her.  I even did what my son did for me that time–I read her my favorite “Frog and Toad” story, by Arnold Lobel.  I think it’s medicinal.