Well, apparently  La Niña, the cool phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate pattern (yes, I looked that up), has left the building! After a year and half of non-stop La Niña, the tropical Pacific ocean-atmosphere system has transitioned to neutral.
In other words the seemingly never-ending cold, wet weather should come to a stop and we should finally starting to warm up, and hopefully dry up, as well!

Today was the first real dry day in a week and boy, doesn't everything look so much better with some sunshine!

                                           

Apparently nature is more than 2 weeks late but it's finally starting to get really pretty out there!

Last Saturday the town was having it's yearly Camellia festival. We attended last year but passed on going this time around since it was rainy and cold.
Many of the Camellias in town are in full bloom right now, like this beautiful, huge red one I pass often on one of my walks:

The Big-leaf Maples (left pic) are unfurling their buds and the Horsetails (on the right) are shooting up super-fast!
The latter are extremely fast-growing plants that achieve full height within a matter of weeks.

      

And while exploring our very soggy 'back 40' I came across the first Triliums ...

So pretty!

It's been one of those very quiet weeks in all, nothing much else to write about I'm afraid.
I baked another bread:



It's a half-half white/whole grain, and I think this was one of my best sandwich breads ever.
Now where did I save that recipe?

I'm also making an effort to eat a lot less meat, from everything I read it's just a lot healthier and I'm also getting more and more worried about how animals are treated these days.
I'm googling all sorts of vegetarian recipes and am trying them out when I can.
Some are made with 'fake' meat and a lot are using beans or eggs or fish as substitutes.

Cauliflower is all the hype at the moment of course, with cauliflower pizza dough or cauliflower mash or even cauliflower 'steaks', like these:

Served with a sweat potato mash and a Ceasar salad it was a very tasty, and colorful, meal!

I finished this puzzle yesterday. Little kittens in a shed with packets of seeds and pots with flowers.
Rather Spring-like I'd say ..

And that was all for the week. Let's hope the nice weather they're promising is really happening and Spring will start in earnest soon. Better late than never!