Spring

Spring is a quick affair here in Houston. It's the narrow window between "winter" and the long humid siege of Summer/fall.[1] Before it is gone, here’s a taste of Houston in the Spring.

Spring is the time when young men’s fancy turns to thoughts of love, and such. Young men are not alone, as Spring is prime time here for both:

the birds (Mallards competing for mate[2]), and

..the bees. (honeybee sp. on buttercup sp.)

And…well, pretty much everything else. Everything tries to maximize the time before the heat arrives with a vengeance.

(Crane Flies mating)

Houston is briefly pretty for a short time, like if one of Cinderella’s uglier, fatter stepsisters had manged to cram her warty foot in the slipper. We’ll take what we can get.

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[1] For the native New Yorker, the seasons in Houston can best be described as transitional phases of summer. What would normally be called Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer elsewhere, are more aptly described here as “Hot, Slightly Less Hot, Hot-with-Flowers, and Thermonuclear-Surface-of-the-Sun”. The scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where the Nazi's face melts off? That was just stock footage from a Houston beach.

[2] Flowery prose aside, this was a fairly brutal ritual from the looks of it, mostly consisting of drakes ganging up on a female who ended up spending most of her time held under the water.