Tiny Update.

If you love rain, or February, or Carolina, then this is the sort of day for you, isn't it?

It rained. It's going to rain more. Then—and oh, friend, are you going to like this—it may snow. Keep an eye to the west-southwestern sky starting, the fancies say, some time tomorrowish. Keep an eye here starting tomorrowish for updates of the less tiny variety. We have houseguests. The forecasting is limited. It's raining.

Front Porch.

Feels like it's 7 pm sometime in April, though the sun's still too low in the sky for that kind of thing. Quarter of five at the close of February, instead, the kind of weather that points all of our noses toward spring, the dog's, of course, included. I don't know if we ever quite fully made our sixty-five degrees today, but we were sixty-three, sixty-two, somewhere in there, little breeze, sun, mainly blue sky. They want rain from here on out, which we need, so OK. The birds are busy. Crows, songbirds. And we're too early yet for me to say so, but I'll say it anyway: The oaks and maples are starting to look fuzzy in silhouette on that ride home back down 70 and from here on the front porch, too, are starting just barely to think about at some point in the not-too-far-off-now of budding out, of leafing out.

Just to be able to sit out at the end of the day is for this moment, anyway, plenty enough.

Local Conditions.

It's warmer today here on the Piedmont, friends and fans of approaching spring, though I hasten to add that after this little spell we're in for rain and then another week of good cold before we bounce back: this is how it works here. This is how it always works here. Hell, we're not even within spitting distance of the late-March freeze yet. Still: In the sun this morning, standing in the driveway without my hat, I felt good. I watered things. The climbing rose on the side of our house is sending out exploratory red leaves. The transplant azaleas are hanging on. The pansies are making a comeback from the systemic neglect I was trying out in January. So, maybe, am I, though the bookshelves are still unshelved and the books are still and still in their boxes.

Let's work our way back into this slowly, shall we? At 5:04 pm in 27244 it's mostly cloudy, weather riding in from the west and south, and it's 52 degrees. The current conditions in 27401 can't possibly be too different than that, but once I make it back home, if they are—if we're getting frogs, say, or locusts, or are in need of the blood of the lamb—I'll make a note of it. Otherwise, tune in tomorrow, when it may be sunny and 65, depending on when the clouds set up and set in.

Oh, Monday.

Cold. Wind. Sun. Winter. I've been neglecting the forecast of late—the move, the book, the winter. As soon as I can get books up on these damn shelves I promise all two or three of you I'll be back on board. Meanwhile, it once more no longer rains.

Stiff Wind.

I'd like to note that though for most of January and February it's been fairly windy all through the city, I'm pretty sure even so that it's windier here at 709 than it was over at 1303. I think we're damn near to being on top of the hill that is College Hill even though we don't live in College Hill. It can be a bitter dogwalk if you leave without the layers you might need in, oh, say, a wind.

Happy Sunday. If you love a slow project, the you'll be thrilled to know that we now enter week three of the bookshelf imbroglio. They look great, man, but they should: I've been painting things white so long it's like I've got snow blindness.

Flame Thrower.

Warm enough to walk the dog at four this afternoon minus a jacket. Sunny. Fancies say rain or snow by tomorrow mid-morning. Winter gasping not maybe just yet last, but gasping.

This morning, at the Sherwin-Williams corporate store—the trim at 709 is Sherwin-Williams, and TMR yesterday accidentally found a Sherwin-Williams corporate store whilst trying to find a dining-room-table-store; we're building built-in bookshelves to match the existing trim; we're also in search of, ah, a dining room table—the dude who made my trim paint was watching The Military Channel at top volume, and on The Military Channel was a gentleman explaining, in great and explicit detail, how one might make, if one so desired, one's own napalm delivery system.

Bookshelves painted. They match. I ain't delivered napalm in any direction whatsoever all day, though, which here at ANYLF we'll score as a (second) success.

Good Wind.

This morning, it was warmer out than it looked like it would be. Tonight, it was colder out than I expected it to be. Can't get my bearings. Dog at the front door sniffing and barking at nothing. Me, too, truth be known. Sun and sun today, and a good wind, cold riding in all day. February. Cold all this coming week. One wonders, though, about how many more of these cold weeks are left. Our last freeze can't be that far off now. I'm not hoping for it yet, but I am saying it's out there. I'm ready to sit on the porch. I'm ready for the evening light to hang on longer. Already it stays light damn near to six o'clock or better. Come on, daffodils. Come on, all else. I'm ready.

Pretty Little.

This is the kind of pretty little rain that makes the dogwood out front of 709 look even more ready to cut itself on, makes the daffodils push further out of the ground, makes me eye the lawnmower under its tarp in the back yard, even though I won't need it for weeks yet. It's cool out there, people, hat and coat cool, but this is the sort of rain we need and need badly, a slow rain and fog and mist that soaks everything through and will give us all something to hang onto once tomorrow scours itself clean and delivers a cold night with temps where they ought to be, dry and crackling down into the twenties. Snow's forecast for the weekend, though how much of that can be relied upon is debatable. Wind and sun in the interim. But now, friends and fans of gray and gloom, now it is wet and chilly and perfect in its own way, a day that demands something cooking a while in the oven for dinner and perhaps, perhaps a little something over ice. Or a cup of tea, if a cocktail's not your thing. Maybe a magazine from a couple weeks ago, one you haven't gotten around to yet. Maybe a television program. Maybe nothing: maybe dinner and early to bed and a good clean start tomorrow. Whatever's your poison, though, do stand in the window here a bit this evening before the sun goes down, and watch your neighbors' lights come on, watch the street go dark. More rain overnight, most likely. Good enough for me.

Rain, Probably.

The fancies are wanting it to rain on us, and a quick sniff out the front door says it smells like rain, says me and says the dog, so: it's going to rain. You heard it here. Not first, but you heard it here. The radio said sleet by morning, and I'd love that, but don't get your hopes up, schoolkids. Too warm. Too everything else. Come morning, the sidewalks will be wet, but whatever's due now will still be due then. I wish I could tell you something else, but I just can't.

Let's see, weatherheads: you want updates? The drought slinks back across the Piedmont. Daffodils bloom in spots across the city. The gray-green here is greener by far than much of what could be seen from the air back from 60605. We're not far from things happening. It's going to rain. A helicopter circled the neighborhood for the better part of half an hour tonight, rattling the old windows here. Chilly week in progress, but not cold.

February: no real season at all. One of those interstitial-type-deals.

Local Update.

Back home from 60605. Little bit of rain. Dead truck. Sun. Chilly. Too dry overall for my liking. Feels like drought again. Wood filler in the countersunk nail holes in the bookshelves. This is how it goes. Still winter. Daffodils trying to come on, but it's still winter.

Pansies blooming pretty well out front.

Spring Forecast.

Severe thunderstorm and tornado watches back west. Big wind all day, and the kind of sky where you know the weather's changing. On the dogwalk this morning, what seems like many, many hours ago now, the dog stopped, stood in the middle of the street, put her nose up into the air, licked and sniffed. She knows, too. She always has. She'll be under the table when we get home.

Possible to see 50 mph winds between 7 and 11 pm, says the NOAA. A band of showers and maybe storms pushing through. Winter's trying to come back around, I think, on the other side of this, but what it looks like we'll have instead is a chillier spring. Sixties tomorrow and Friday. Cooler over the weekend. More rain then, too. No lows much below thirty. The daffodils are going to be three feet tall before the weather's back to normal.

Crown Molding.

Though somebody down the street is doing something motorized -- pressure washing? paving? -- all is glorious, if globally warmed, here on the porch at 709. The dog and I are sitting in the lees of last night's sawdust and wood chips from all the sanding and sawing and, oh, yes, friends and fans of fancy joinery, coping. It is 57 degrees. It is 10:30 in the morning. It is February 10.

Th ground's wet, but we're not showing any measurable precip here at ANYLF Carbon Footprint HQ. We're some combination of sunny and hazy. If I didn't know any better I'd say that whatever we had overnight and early morning is still in the last throes of burning off. The transplanted bluebells look, from here, anyway, to have survived. Jury still out on the azaleas. Pressure-paving activities have ceased for now. The beagle down the street is barking some, but not enough to vex. More low cloud coming by. Birds. Coffee. Tuesday.

Black Gold.

Hey, spring. This is going to send all the fruit trees into bloom, of course, which will call down the gods of late freezes -- except not even, since those gods saw their shadows and went back to sleep for six weeks. These gods will be the gods of timely, seasonal freezes, and all this vastly undeserved glory is bound to extract some kind of price from those dudes. We're not yet in the teens of February, friends. What's important is not to get excited. What's important is to remember how guilty we must feel about all this, how unsettled. What's important is to drive the truck, windows down, in to work anyway.

This was a weekend of built-in bookshelves. The going is slow, but going. If all keeps going this evening, we'll be trimmed out. Then the painting and the, oh, how do you say, the actual shelving. Right now they're just pretty, spendy boxes.

Bought drill bits late last night at Lowe's -- Hitachi's Black Gold brand, because what I need out of my drill bits is a fierceness nonpareil -- and the cashier looked at them, said Black Gold, then said Texas Tea, and then sang, in its entirety, the theme from The Beverly Hillbillies. Double-time. Then I came home and drilled more tiny pilot holes. Slowly.

Warmish Night.

Comparatively, anyway. Just back from the dogwalk. Headed back out on the porch, actually, for a chilly late-night nightcap. 40 degrees feels balmy up against what we've seen much of this winter. And oh, the day they're promising us tomorrow.

The dog's finished her supper. Time for that nightcap.

Really Cold.

Cold. Really. Blazing sun and cloudless and still in the teens at ten o'clock and as hard to believe as it was a few days ago that we'd see evening snow on the heels of a sixty-degree afternoon is this forecast: mid-sixties and sun both weekend days, and upper fifties to low sixties for most of next week. Just like that, spring comes to February. No precip in the ten-day, though. One imagines that one will have to water the pansies, the transplanted azaleas. One worries over the January shortfall. And a quick check of the drought monitor


shows that we've slipped back into drought. That's us -- the square one right there in the middle with the D0/Abnormally Dry yellow swath sneaking back across it. So I'm deeply torn: I could use me some porch-sitting days next week, would not mind at all prepping for class outside rather than in, but drought? So soon? Time to look into rain barrels for this old house, I do suppose. Though it should here be said that rain barrels do probably require one wee thing to really function properly...

But so help me, though the following is ANYLF heresy, I will fret about it all next week if only I could slide a window or two open for even just an hour this weekend. I am starting to get the cabin fever. I am starting to measure the daffodils' progress against my own mental health. I could use a crocus sighting. I saw a cardinal in the yard this morning. Cardinals aren't even worth mentioning, but there one was, down by the tarped-over lawn mower, and I thought, see? See? Hang on.

Cautiously Optimistic.

Not that you'd know it if you just walked, gloveless, to and from lunch, squinting into a nearly cloudless sky and not even really needing your hat except when the wind blew, but we're meant to get more snow tonight and overnight. They're giving us the old one-to-three inches, but everybody who's anybody is saying things like "occasionally heavy bursts" and "locally heavier amounts" and Emily Byrd over there at the Fox 8 actually said "thundersnow" on the television, which of course caused a wee dance of glee here at the 27244 ANYLF field office.

Oh, dear sweet baby Jesus in a water bucket, come on, thundersnow.

Stop by the grocery on your way home just for fun. Loaf of bread, container of milk. Stand in line. I do love me some Carolina snowstorm grocery store lines.

Keep it tuned here, friends and fans of winter weather, for the very latest.

February Weathers.

I kid you not, friends and fans of it smelling like April: at six o'clock tonight, it smelled like April. It was also nearly sixty degrees then. Right here and now, though, at eleven-something pm, it is 35 and falling, snow trying to get here before the front pulls through, and February in all the ways one might imagine. But it's not going to snow. And/or, if it does, it isn't going to much matter. Sorry, kids. I tried. I was hopeful yesterday. This afternoon, however, as I was coming back down Elm and across Bellmeade and had the windows happily down in the pickup, even though I knew it was, as they say, fixing to rain, I also sort of knew that when and/or if it somehow did snow, it could not possibly count for much, because of the sixty-degree ground, etcetera and et al. Oh, the hopes I had for the live-from-the-salt-trucks. Oh, the hopes I had for school not actually starting up tomorrow. Oh, how I have no ground upon which to complain if it is that my school starts tomorrow. People with real jobs have been in school for weeks.

Cold and rainy out there. Wouldn't be surprised to see a snowflake before we're done tonight. The forecast has some snow for tomorrow, too, but only some, and only maybe. Cold. Wet. February. More of the same tomorrow, I reckon.

Super Sunday.

It was warm today. Sit-on-the-back-porch-and-read-the-NYT-warm. It's supposed to be warm tomorrow, too. And, friends and fans of February, I won't say they're saying it's not going to snow, because they're saying it is going to snow, but they're saying it's not really going to snow, not a lot, anyway, and it really probably isn't, but this is one of those not-really-going-to-snow snows that could be either no snow, really, like they're saying, or real snow, actual snow snow, and all I'm saying is: maybe step out on your back porch tomorrow night and see what you can see.