Sunday 2 March 2014

prevernal

By the meteorological reckoning, Spring time sprung over the weekend with the beginning of the month. The cross-quarter day, the March Equinox, however does not come until later in the month, not that we got so much as a shudder, much less a faint or a swoon of Winter here.
Some cultures utilize an equal rigid though variable metric, still astronomical—like the Celts, who have developed a scale to ascertain the relative strength of the noon-day sun and declare the season to have begun once the and some cultures even ritually observe a native totem-animal, anxious whether the beast has seen his shadow, portending either a prolonged Winter or an early Spring.
Though the climate is getting all bolloxed up and Nature is confused, by our estimate and at our behest, I suspect the biological signals are probably the best measures, like these crocuses and snow-drops in our garden, that we are emerging from hibernation.