After mid-winter comes spring

Today’s (and yesterday’s) local weather will set a baseline for some of us that clearly demonstrates the validity of William McDonough’s assertion that “Here's where redesign begins in earnest, where we stop trying to be less bad and we start figuring out how to be good.” If it’s not clear to you, being less cold is not the same as being warm. The remainder of this week, temperatures will be less cold than yesterday and today, but won’t warm enough to begin to thaw, let alone hot enough to melt. I am so looking forward to warm weather instead of these dangerous, bad, cold below zero days. (I think the dogs agree with me although the Better Half is as strongly opposed to “too hot” as I am to “too cold.”) Meanwhile, in my olld home town of Boston, it’s currently in the mid 40s. I come by my intolerance honestly.

actually, this is progress toward Spring

Photo by J. Harrington

As we’ve noted elsewhere, our local temperatures normally get above freezing about the same time we reach eleven hours of daylight, during the last few days of February. Four weeks from now we should begin to enter mud season, except on our driveway, which probably will be thawing and melting for most of March. I’ll probably be grumping about the slippery ice covering the drive unless we get a major melt or I get creative with  the tractor and the backblade. The dogs don’t seem to care much about ice or mud because neither freezes their paws the way this morning’s seven below did. I don’t seem to be able to convince them to spend less time sniffing when it gets this cold and we’ve tried and failed to get them to wear boots. C’mon Spring, hurry fast!

We may get some more really cold days before meteorological spring (March 1) or astronomical spring (March 20) arrive, but I’m going to proceed with the Celtic first celebration of spring on February 1 and 2, by honoring Imbolc.

Although we would think of Imbolc as being in the midst of Winter, it represents in fact the first of a trio of Spring celebrations, since it is the time of the first appearance of the snowdrop, and of the melting of the snows and the clearing of the debris of Winter. It is a time when we sense the first glimmer of Spring, and when the lambs are born. In the Druid tradition it is a gentle, beautiful festival in which the Mother Goddess is honoured with eight candles rising out of the water at the centre of the ceremonial circle.

Imbolc by Damh the Bard

As the dark, cold morning gives way to light,
And the world shows its face dazzling in her nakedness,
So the twigs and leaf-bare branches,
Bow to the passing dance
Of old Jack Frost.
His crystal breath on the earth,
And the corners of houses weep icicles of joy.
But where is the Sun’s warmth?
Where is life?
A small flower, delicate and pure-white,
Looks to the earth,
As if talking to the waiting green,
“Not yet,” it seems to whisper.
“When I fall, then you can return.”
And she nods her head,
as the Lady passes by,
Leaving more flowers in Her wake. 

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.