Cherry blossom in the snow

I almost missed the view of blossoming cherry trees with my camera this year. One day I thought "hmm...it's started but let's wait a couple of days until the cherry trees become all white". Well, they became all white...snow white :). So a couple of words about the English weather of a week in April in connection with the cherry trees:

The day after I had realised that Japan's unofficial national flower was about to fill the cherry trees I couldn't take any pictures because it was raining.

The following couple of days it was cloudy and dark (inappropriate lighting :)).

Then I managed to take pictures in the sunshine but many of the petals had already fallen so I was kind of late. By the way, did you notice that in films about Japan, all the blossoming cherry trees are pinkish while the ones in Europe are white? I need to learn about cherry tree types as well :).

A couple of days later I went to take pictures again because I had never taken pictures of cherry petals covered with snow before :). If I remember well, this was the first time when it snowed in London this 'winter'.

To make the report complete, the snowy morning was a day after we had to finish football in the park early because after several sunny-cloudy-windy periods within one hour, it started to rain horizontally.

Strange thing it is, The Weather. I read a couple of weeks ago (and also mentioned it here in the blog) that, generally, we don't want to change the sunset (or sunrise), we just accept it as it is. I need to rethink this idea. I know I'm just making my own life harder and more miserable with it but I just simply don't want to accept that it snows in April and my hands are still freezing when I go out for a walk (to the station or to the shop :)) since the end of October. Another sign that I cannot just let the weather 'happen' is that I even 'order' good wheather whenever we plan to go outside London for a walk in the countryside, for example.

Probably the worshipping of various gods and goddesses also have some similar roots: Amun Rae, the Sun God in Egypt, Zeus with his lightnings, you name them. It seems to me that to believe in a god it either offers you the hope that you can change the nature and the weather (through some sacrifice or rain dance if that's what is 'needed') or it can help you accept nature (The Nature and the nature of people). Sometimes I wish I believed in god(s). At least like the boy in The Polar Express (watched it in April as its Christmas theme matched the weather). Then I wouldn't have contradicting ideas about the weather and other things. Now I'm between 1) "I can't do anything about it, I should just accept it", and 2) "let's order good weather again, it worked the last couple of times".

How is this connected to aikido? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. At least it doesn't rain in the dojo :).