As is traditional, a few photos of the year’s first purple-and-yellow garden citizens; portents of approaching spring that are much appreciated while the days are still short and wet and grey.

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The first half of February is on the early side, but not as early as last year when we saw them in January.

I had a quarrel with our cat, who observed me lying down outside to get an angle on these guys and wanted, of course, to frolic in the foliage right where I was looking.

One picture is with my aging Pixel 4, the others with a “real” camera. Since my daughter has a Film-class project and has absconded with my favorite modern lenses, these are through an at-least-50-year-old Pentax 50mm F1.4; good for portraits of flowers and people both.

That failing Pixel is annoying me; its battery is hurting and USB-C socket becoming less reliable. I loathe that USB-C form factor more and more every passing year. Since nobody but Asus is making a good small Android and they’re not offering it in Canada, it looks like a Pixel 7 is in my future. I like things that still work fine fifty years later, but that’s not the world we live in.

That world is generally pretty fucked up what with climate and Covid and war and burgeoning fascism. One of these years has to turn out nice, right?

But anyhow, the flowers are coming up. Their slender stems punch effortlessly through last year’s dead leaves; I think there’s a lesson for us in that.