While I was out and about on Saturday, I noticed the sure signs that spring is coming: flowers were popping up, in border beds, in the wild, and in the park:

Today ended up being a very pleasant afternoon, with the sun emerging periodically. I took the long way home from the Cleveland Park neighborhood through Rock Creek Park and captured this shot along the way.

(As best as I could tell where the beam of light hit did not contain pirate treasure.)

I’ve decided that this spring I might be willing and ready to play outdoor volleyball again, in part for the mental health benefits it offers. I’ve emailed my former teammates to see if any of them are interested, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that some of them might be available.

A couple of my teammates played outdoors last fall, and the report I heard after the first couple weeks was that the league was was relatively good about mask wearing and social distancing from other teams and on the sidelines. Volleyball is one of those sports where there you do end up in close proximity to your teammates and some competitors, and some contact with teammates can happen as you’re chasing after a ball and trying not to knock each other down. So it’s not without risk. But it’s also not basketball, where it can’t be played without automatically coming into contact with everyone else on the court. And being outdoors definitely helps lower the risks of spreading disease.

How are you thinking about risk management as we move into year #2 of COVID? Will you continue to stay home and isolated? Were you never paying attention to those recommendations to begin with?

I know, I know. It’s graffiti. I’m not supposed to appreciate it. And, yet, it made me smile, hypocrite that I am.

Scenes from my walk to the store earlier today:

With apologies to my northern readers, I thought I’d share some of my photos from walking around this weekend, since our snowstorm gave us no accumulation today.

I first saw snowdrops in the week after Christmas. They’re growing in huge clumps around the grounds of the Quaker meetinghouse.

Georgetown continues to be full of winter jasmine.

It was a lovely sunset this evening over the Potomac River. The Georgetown Waterfront Park is one of my favorite urban reclamation projects in D.C. For decades, it was an inaccessible parking lot, used more by tourists than by locals. But for nearly ten years now, it’s routinely been filled with people enjoying the outdoors, including the river stairs where I took these shots.