Azaleas & Dogwoods in Bloom © John Suddath

We officially welcome the first day of spring this week. The weather in North Carolina can be highly variable, but the trees already are in bloom. In fact, we’re already seeing the sequence changing. With Easter being so late, it’s anyone’s guess what may be blooming by then. The big blooms in North Carolina are the azaleas with large gardens across most of the Piedmont.

In the Triangle we had a relatively mild winter, but early predictions are for a warm spring. Of course, you know what it means to try to predict more than 2 -3 days even though we have complex computer models, better tracking, etc. Add in the effects of climate change, and it’s still an incredible game that Mother Nature plays every day.

As if we didn’t already have enough division in the country, for some reason we’re having a big debate about daylight savings time. I don’t have a dog in this hunt, so I won’t comment one way or the other. What made it blow up this year?

With the outbreak of war in Europe, spring will be important in helping people to survive. It’s not just oil and gas markets that have been become unpredictable; the long-term agricultural markets are in peril. We can’t even seem to be unified in the US in opposition to the war. Have we become so angry that there is absolutely nothing upon which we can agree upon as a priority?

Of course, it’s the beginning of the political season with the state primaries coming up for the mid-term federal elections. Raleigh also delayed its municipal elections a year. We just barely got a set of maps, so now some politicians are having to decide where they’re going to run and/or if that means they may have to move a few miles. Everyone has been fund-raising all the time even though the primaries in North Carolina usually aren’t that contested. This year again will be an exception.

Just as we were about to breathe with some possible relief from the 2-year pandemic, another Covid-19 variant shows up so we may have yet another cycle in a few months. With the death toll in the US approaching a million and several million worldwide, this has become a tragedy of epic proportions. The public health concerns were submerged under a plethora of political posturing than pushed the US to the bottom ranks of dealing with it effectively.

What isn’t up for grabs? Well, spring is a brilliantly beautiful season in North Carolina. In Texas, it usually was just a transition from cold to hot with a brief interlude for even more high winds and tornadoes. At least we’ve got a few more months before we need to worry about hurricanes.

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