Willow Leaves.

They're always first. One more thing easily forgotten, easily enough remembered again. I saw them — always see them, I now realize — on the off-ramp from Wendover to Bryan, off by the reclaimed drainage creek, headed down into the little park there, along a leftover fairway from when all that office park and hospital business was a public golf course for this neighborhood, back in the fifties, I believe. Way back when. Long, long ago. In the time, children, when people played out-of-doors. Willows. Old ones, tall, and always the first thing to leaf back out— tiny leaves, light, light green, almost yellow, like strings of lights all up and down the branches. Next up ought to be the Bradford Pears in bloom, if they didn't get nailed in the weekend freeze, and also the Japanese magnolia out front, already this evening showing deep color in spots. Should be tomorrow or the next day. It seemed to survive those two 27-degree nights. The Bradfords all over everywhere had sort of halfheartedly started in, and out in 27244, most of them look well frozen along the main college drag there, blooming a kind of sad tan, but the magnolia here kept all but ten or twenty of its buds closed through all that. Breaks my heart when that tree gets hit. If I'm lucky, though, and if the creek don't rise and the weather holds, I'll have to find something else to break my heart this year.

We clouded over late this afternoon. Rain well south, for the most part. A low over Florida, and while there are some spotty showers east, I don't think we stand much of a chance. They want to assign us sixty-seven entire degrees tomorrow. With sun. Please insert here the rain lament. Except that those same they want to give us rain toward the end of the week, and maybe a few times next week, too, and so if we do get all sixty-seven of those degrees, and if it is sunny, and if the tree does bloom, and if the beagles across the street can keep it to themselves for an evening hour or two, well, then, all or some of this might turn out OK.

Click yourselves on over to that drought monitor. We're among the last lucky few to stay in D-4, which is something like apocalyptic rapture drought, but that area's getting smaller each week. Atlanta broke out. Greenville broke out. We could be next. Even with sixty-seven degrees and sun, we could be next. Get out in your yards tomorrow night, friends and fans of weather. Check on your trees. See what's coming along.