A Rough Draft of Spring

March has been very gray, unusually gray, or was that my imagination? No, my neighbor Terri noticed it too, and we pined for spring sunshine, but day after day it's as dark at 9 in the morning as if it's 9 at night, and most of the time, raining. It's rained eight days out of the last ten. Even my dream last night included rain. I was out in the rain and found the dead body of a pileated woodpecker and began crying. Nice dream, huh? Thanks, March. It's raining now.

Yes, how many gray days occupied the month of March 2018? How many cloudy days have besieged us until we are all slightly crazy with traffic accidents all along I-44 every freaking day? Or let's put it another way; how many sunny ("clear") days have we had in March? I searched for the answer and found it here. Exactly ONE sunny day all month so far: Saturday, March 3. There's a sunny day predicted for Friday, March 30; that's the only other, if it happens. TWENTY-NINE days out of THIRTY-ONE this month were cloudy, mostly cloudy, partly cloudy, snowy, "T-storms," or scattered clouds.

But before I learned this awful truth I woke the morning of the equinox, March 20, before sunrise, saw a blush of color in the east and excitedly thought, "I will take a picture of the sunrise and call it 'Spring Sunrise'!" and prepared my camera. Sunrises develop their color -- it's like stirring Crystal Light into a glass of water -- so I waited and snapped, anticipating more color, and what you see here, that little pinkish blush, faded and vanished beneath more gray, and since that day it's rained like all get-out. Yes, this is your "nature photo" for the month. I can't even remember what I did all this March except trying to see Black Panther on a Tuesday only to be told at the box office that the afternoon showing was all sold out.