It’s no wonder the koi were going crazy yesterday.  We had a high of 86*!  This is February for heaven’s sake.  Bah!  We need a deep freeze to kill harmful mosquitoes; not to mention the fact that it is supposed to be winter.  Koi cannot be fed in wintertime when temperatures are low but because it has been so hot they’ve been asking for food.  You can tell by this picture how hungry they were.  I even had to fish up (no pun intended) their summertime vittles instead of their spring and fall blend (which is made to be digested more easily in cooler temperatures.)  Our colorful little carp clan here is Clem, Cleo, Cleaven, Claire, Claude, and Chloe.  (Yes, I have a penchant for alliteration.)  And they were ravenous!   I am going against the groundhog this year and predicting an early spring.  I heard blue jays with their hawk’s cries and the songs of my mother’s favorite bird, the cardinal.  A squirrel trying to drink from our waterfall was chattering at me as I sat on our stone bench feeding the fish.  I looked up at our fig tree and noticed it was beginning to bud.  Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” came to mind, one of my favorite pieces of classical music.  My daddy used to say time and tide wait for no man.  The American author Gary Zukav said:

“The coming and going of the seasons give us more than the springtimes, summers, autumns, and winters of our lives.  It reflects the coming and going of the circumstances of our lives like the glassy surface of a pond that shows our faces radiant with joy or contorted with pain.”

So rather than lamenting this “winter’s” inevitable passing, I shall cast my thoughts to spring.  And, like our koi, just keep swimming.