what could be more natural...

...than temperatures twenty-eight degrees above "the average for this date"...

and nearly a half an inch of rain ( with more on the way...no snow forecast ) three days before the end of one of the warmest years on recorded and the deniers firmly in control of the political apparatus...if we look to the past for definitions of "normal" we may find ourselves seriously confused about what is going on...

bright green lichens seem out of place in december at the south end of the inland sea...

the local berries...

and the new york imports in the yard and in the bed of my truck are all cold hardy so their verdancy is not a surprise...

neither is that of the winter rye...

ot the winter wheat...although some of the wheat seems to be tinged a bit yellow...it is, perhaps, not accustomed to rain rather than snow this time of year...

some of the onions and the berries cohabiting in the south bed seem to be yellowing as well...

while the population of dryad's saddles and lichens slowly consuming stumpy seem to be robust and expanding...

and on anther "robust" note...the spuds in the basement are doing fine.