The door into summer

"While still a kitten Pete had worked out a simple philosophy. I was in charge of quarters, rations, and weather; he was in charge of everything else. But he held me especially responsible for weather. Regularly Pete would check his own door, refuse to go out it because of that unpleasant white stuff beyond it, then badger me to open a people door.

He had a fixed conviction that at least one of them must lead into summer weather. Each time this meant that I had to go around with him to each of eleven doors, hold it open while he satisfied himself that it was winter out that way, too, then go on to the next door, while his criticisms of my mismanagement grew more bitter."

Robert Heinlein

Heinlein's fictional cat Pete could have a meaningful discussion with any or all of our three goats. Convinced that it is only winter on our property, they regularly abscond into the forest looking for warmer climes. They return, sometimes after a few days, bleating and bedraggled and glaring at us for not having flicked the "warm this valley" switch during their absence.  We feed them and house them and pat them, trying in all of our clearly fallible human ways to repudiate the notion that we have anything to do with the bitterly cold nights and sleeting days.

The temperature oscillates diurnally between about -3°C and 15°C, with the "unpleasant white stuff" descending down almost to our front door.

Nice by the fire, nasty in the fields

It is spectacular, and the wattle in the corner of the picture is trying to let all of us know, even the disbelieving goats, that summer will surely follow spring, and spring is maybe not that far away.