The tropical plantings are hanging in there on the 5th of December

The silly variegated ginger is barely hardy in the Florida garden but looks great one week into December just a bit north of Washington, DC. Go figure. We're sitting on an Ephemeral milestone; on the last day of November the sun set at 4:47 pm, the next day, December 1, we lost another minute of daylight in the evening. The sun set at 4:46. The good news is that after sitting on that number for almost two weeks, it will change to 4:47 so we've seen the earliest sunset. Of course the bad news is that sunrise will continue to move in the wrong direction until the last day of this month when it will rise at 7:27am. Again, that number will sit unchanged for almost two weeks until it starts to drop and they days will be growing at both ends. I can hardly wait.

Curiously, we have already seen our latest sunrise this year. On October 31,the sun rose at 7:34 am. The onset of daylight savings time, the next day, moved it to 6:36 am and it's been steadily getting later though, as noted early, it will stop at 7:27.

I took the picture this morning about 9:00 am. It ws raining and the rain turned to snow shortly thereafter. Now at 1:00, there's nearly an inch of snow on grassy surfaces, cars, plants, etc. Nothing has accumulated on the streets or sidewalks probably because it is above freezing and has been, excepting the odd hour or two) for....well since last winter.