"Has your aerial gotten bigger?" a woman chasing a brown curly haired dog asked me. "Maybe its just how you're holding it!" she added. We laughed as her dog ran away. I tried to remember where I had met her before. After a somewhat stormy week, the air is crisp and the sky is a clear blue. The pressure is around 1023 hPa, suggesting clear weather for the rest of the day. I notice that bulbs are already poking up through the grass on the edge of the park. A 2022 study at Cambridge showed that flowers in the UK are blooming an average of one month earlier than they used to, and this is putting them out of sync with the insects that they need to reproduce, and that need them for food.

As of yesterday, the Palisades fire in Los Angeles is 100% contained. Checking the Calfire maps every day, often multiple times per day, since Tuesday January 7th was a ritual that I hope I will never have to repeat.