Freak summer weather

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Here’s what it looked like a couple of weeks ago:

Cool, misty, snowed-upon and sheep-infested. Actually, the sheep are still there. And I have nothing against them. I was just reaching for adjectives. Actually, they are quite smelly. But I can deal with it.

This man was throwing snowballs for his dog to chase. Sort of. He wasn’t that great at making snowballs.

Fast-forward to today:

OK, so you can’t really tell the temperature from this pic. You’ll have to trust me (or just check a more trustworthy internet source). It was warm. I swear that tree is thinking hard about generating some buds.

The sky was a brilliant blue that’s rare enough even in summer to catch my attention. Usually by 10am on any given day there’s at least a saturation-sucking haze and some solid clouds.

I haven’t seen colours this brilliant in months. It was in the mid-teens Celsius. If this was Canada (except Vancouver) everyone would be going delirious and going out in shorts and T-shirts. In Vancouver half of them have been wearing their shorts all winter but they might be squinting a bit at the sunlight. Any minute now all the plum trees are going to explode like popcorn into fluffy blossom-festooned things.

I seem to have been a bit myopic in my selection of photographic subjects today. It is still February and we are well into the northern hemisphere, so the sun is still slanty and despite the absence of snow, the real difference, aside from details, is difficult to capture on camera.

It’s supposed to cool off again now. That’s OK. We got away with something today.