Rain and forest thoughts

Winter is here, it was 19 degrees F this morning (about minus ten Celsius), with 2 inches of powdery snow. Finally! I thought global warming would mean no more snow ever in December, but this year we seems to have some normality again. Well, in December that is, the rest of the year was still climate crazy. Sitting in the cold I was thinking about the rainforest, the humid, green and warm places where you can nearly hear the green things growing. The closest I have been to one this year was at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St Louis. The photo above is from the wall etched with plant silhouettes that is at the entrance to one of the green houses.

Rain as part of a sturgeon-shaped fountain.

And rain inside the greenhouse, where the path takes you under a waterfall. Real rain forests are kind of strange - there is usually 99.9% green and very few colorful flowers. It is not liek greenhouses filled with an abundance of red, pink, yellow, and blue. You really have to look for the color spots in the real rainforests. Also, most flowers are high up in the canopy, not along the trails or planted in pots hung on trees. But the feeling is the same. If you close your eyes and just smell and listen, you can imagine yourself in the Andes or Central America. You only need some birdsounds and howling monkeys and it would be perfect.