Japanese Magnolia.

The tree bloomed. For those of you scoring at home, this is a drought-impacted version of all this: about half the flower output that we've had in past years. But. Still.

Here's North Carolina spring: The fancies want to drop seventy entire degrees on us on Saturday. Then they think they might perhaps want to give us a little snow Monday night. At the very least they're calling for a little syrupy rain.

We used to say around here that it always snows in March. That was then. But still. Find my friend Jim Clark in the meat section at the Harris Teeter and he'll scowl at you and tell you it always snows in March. Always has, still does. Then he'll snag the deeply-discounted sell-it-today don't-look-too-closely-at-it ribeye you were eyeing, and he'll be gone. Vanished. Because that, friends and fans of weather, is the way it works.

The tree bloomed. It was a weird, heavy day, sunlight like a parcel I was carrying around, and the tree bloomed anyway. Or as a result of all that. Or completely independently of all of it. Let's go with that last one. That's the one that makes sense.

In other news, there is no other news.