For many years, February hasn't always been my favorite month. It's a grey-brown month here in St. Louis and I pull out my garden books and do a little dreaming, a little planning. I think it's because I'm so thirsty for color and green. This is a floral I painted for my 2012 calender. I think home grown flowers look best in Blue Ball jars.

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing,

wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating;

there is really no such thing as bad weather,

only different kinds of good weather. -- John Ruskin

I've copied this quote as much for me as anyone. Weather does effect me I'm sad to say. If I see the sunshine in the morning, for some reason my breakfast tastes better and I'm in lighter spirits. Oh how I wish my moods weren't effected by the seasons, the rain, the dull cold days. It's a challenge some days to persevere. But I think that we all have the challenge to not let circumstance -- be it weather, traffic or even a mosquito bite ruin our day. This quote reminds me to see my life like weather. There are just going to be changes -- and really some of the best things in life have come from what I thought were awful. So the challenge is to get through February not with my head held down counting the days, but up and looking to see and find the good in the day and even in the brown and grey.