It is About 12 Degrees Here...

It is cold, very, very cold here. If you lived in the Yucatan Peninsula or other climes south of the U.S. border, you would not feel the bitter cold. No. You would feel warm tropical breezes and see blue skies filled with billowy white clouds. Sure, occasionally, there would be a rain shower, but it would pass and then all would be beautiful again. The air would always be soft....except in hurricane season. That's only a couple of months to worry about though.

And since it's the tropics, there would be tropical flowers all over the place which you would soon come to regard as easily as geraniums in a suburban garden in the north. You might even become complascent and jaded. Maybe your eye would no longer catch the brilliance of it all. Hopefully not. Hopefully you would still see the wonder of it all. Hopefully, you would still be moved.

As a visitor, at certain points, I was almost breathless every day. It was beautiful and if I ever lived there, I don't think that I would become jaded. We don't have geraniums that look like this here in Very-Republican-Town, Illinois...



It is 12 degrees here and there is no sign of it warming any time soon. Let's look at the flower and pretend that it is warmer than it is. Maybe that can sustain us for a couple more months...