In the Midwest, Mother’s Day is often associated with flowers–not because of the bouquets given to Mom to honor her on a special day, but because Mother’s Day is viewed in these parts as the traditional weekend to fill out your garden beds. If you wait until Mother’s Day to plant flowers, the folk wisdom goes, you’ll avoid the risk of your plants dying from an unseasonably late frost.
As is so often the case, this time-honored rule of thumb reflects a significant kernel of truth: May is a wonderful time to grow things in central Ohio and elsewhere in the Midwest. Russell was in town for a visit this weekend, and he remarked on how green everything looks around here, with most of the trees fully leafed out, the grass growing like crazy, and flowers and flowering shrubs everywhere you look. As the picture above shows, in this season Ohio is a study in green. The air, freshened with recent rains and the fragrance of growing things, smells good, too.
It warmed up yesterday, and as I walked to the library to return some books I saw the first spring flowers. They were, of course, daffodils: the hardy, brilliant yellow blooms that often lead the spring flower parade and can be expected to survive one or two dustings of snow.
Can anything be more welcome than the first flowers of spring? It’s not a novel thought, because daffodils are a well-established muse, as demonstrated by William Wordsworth’s famous poem:
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the Milky Way, They stretched in never-ending line along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, in such a jocund company: I gazed—and gazed—but little thought what wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.
It’s a drizzly, wet, gray Saturday morning in Columbus, Ohio, with temperatures in the low 50s–which is about part for the course the Midwest in March. It’s not exactly the kind of day that encourages you to get outside and do anything. On the other hand, it’s ideal for staying indoors, listening to music, and trying to get caught up on checklist items that have languished during the work week.
On days like this, I like listening to Mozart. This morning, I am enjoying an excellent recording of Mozart piano sonatas by Orli Shaham. It’s ideally suited for a damp day. The pieces are bright, tuneful, and interesting yet calming–the kind of music that helps you focus as you tackle the tasks on your to-do list.
Years ago, back in the CD era, I had a CD called Mozart for the Morning Commute that featured music designed to keep you alert as you navigated the roadways to the office. I wore that CD out. Based on what I’ve read, Mozart was more of an evening person than a morning person, but his music certainly is ideally suited to the morning hours.
Well, it’s February 29, 2024–the “leap day” in this “leap year.” And that gives rise to a question: why do we use the word “leap” in describing the calendar manipulation that happens every four years to account for the fact that the Earth doesn’t take precisely 365 days, and not a second more, to complete its lap around the Sun?
Here’s the problem, from my view: it’s the end of February, and no one really feels like “leaping” anywhere. “Leaping” contemplates springing ahead with force and enthusiasm and perhaps a bit of youthful hopefulness and exuberance–which is why the saying “look before you leap” came about. But at the end of February, most of us aren’t really brimming with qualities like enthusiasm and hopefulness and exuberance, are we? Instead, we’d prefer that the month would be over and it would be March, already–but instead we’re saddled with another day in February, and we’re not exactly “leaping” about it.
In short, “leap” is not only inapt, it’s kind of a slap in the face.
Why the use of “leap”? Here’s how the National Air and Space Museum explains it: “a common year is 52 weeks and 1 day long. That means that if your birthday were to occur on a Monday one year, the next year it should occur on a Tuesday. However, the addition of an extra day during a leap year means that your birthday now “leaps” over a day. Instead of your birthday occurring on a Tuesday as it would following a common year, during a leap year, your birthday “leaps” over Tuesday and will now occur on a Wednesday.”
So, it’s the days of the week that are “leaping,” not us. Well, I say the heck with that! I say we should come up with a more people-centric term that describes how this day affects human beings, not inanimate squares on a calendar.
I suggest that we use “prolong” rather than “leap,” as in “prolong the agony”–because that’s how we feel about adding another unwelcome day to an unwelcome month in an unwelcome time of year. So, happy Prolong Day! Let’s get through it, and get on to March.
At about 5:15 this morning, a siren went off in downtown Columbus. Its loud, droning wail, which sounded like I was one of the Eloi being summoned underground by the Morlocks in the movie The Time Machine, jolted me out of a sound sleep. After a moment to allow my sleep-befogged brain to assimilate what was happening, I realized that the sound was the local thunderstorm warning siren. A split second later, a piercing beep from my phone announced that a National Weather Service alert was confirming that the loud siren was, indeed, correct and a thunderstorm was on its way.
At this point, all hope of returning to peaceful sleep was lost. That’s too bad, because it’s actually pretty enjoyable to sleep as a storm rolls through at night, with the patter of wind-swept rain against the window and the rumble of distant thunder. I braced myself for another notice–perhaps an amber alert this time, to let me know that some senior who lives 100 miles away was last seen in a silver Toyota Camry with Indiana license plates–but this morning there would only be two nerve-jangling, sleep-interrupting notices.
Do we actually need all of these alerts? How much notice must one person endure in the modern world? And what is the risk that, like the boy who cried wolf, the liberal use of alerts just conditions us to ignore them? The thunderstorm that followed within a minute or two of the siren and the cellphone alert didn’t seem especially severe to this native Midwesterner. I’m not sure exactly what I was supposed to do in the few moments between receiving the notices and the arrival of the storm, but I seriously question how many Columbusites who were jangled into wakefulness by the alerts took appropriate action.
I’d suggest the authorities use a bit more discretion before triggering these early morning weather alerts.
When I woke up this morning, the skies over the lodge at Big Bend National Park were clear, but when I went for a morning walk a ground-hugging mist was pouring into the Chisos Mountains basin from the east. As I watched the mist slowly spilled forward, gradually covering the mountain peaks like chocolate sauce covering the vanilla ice cream in a hot fudge sundae.
The ranger who spoke to us yesterday noted that the Big Bend National Park has many different ecosystems and is full of surprises. The morning mist is just one of them.
Betty and I went for a walk around the noon hour yesterday to allow her to meet her daily quota of sniffs. We strolled to the end of the street, turned right, headed south down the access road, and then turned west onto the community trail where Betty eagerly greeted Tucker, a large yellow Lab, and exchanged ritual canine greetings with him.
It was a bright day with a brisk wind that was sculpting the cloud cover into fantastic shapes. Directly overhead, the wind furrowed the clouds so that they looked like the rows in a freshly plowed field that was ready for planting. In other parts of the sky, the clouds had been flattened into a kind of wispy haze that the sun didn’t quite cut through, so you could feel the warmth, but not the direct sunshine effect. And to the east, fleecy clouds scudded across the horizon, framed by glimpses of bright blue sky and the foothills of the mountains in the far distance. It was a strikingly pretty trail sky, so I had to stop and take this picture–which really doesn’t do it justice.
The surroundings in the Sonoran desert definitely give you an incentive to get out and walk around, because you never know what you might see in the sky above or on the ground below. I enjoyed the opportunity to see this particular sky. Betty, on the other hand, kept her snout to the ground and focused on some evidently irresistible smells left by dogs that had gone before.
February is upon us. Weather-wise, it’s probably the most despised month of the calendar in the northern hemisphere. By the time February rolls around, people are sick to death of winter and eager to welcome the promise of spring that arrives with March. But there is crummy old February and its traditionally awful weather, blocking the way.
February is also weird, because it’s got fewer days than every other month. When I was a kid, my grandmother taught me a rhyme to help me remember the length of the various months that started “30 days hath September, April, June, and November . . . .” but the rhyme kind of petered out when it hit February, which “stands alone.” All of which makes you wonder: why does February have only 28 days in most years? With 365 days and 12 months in a year, you could have easily have at least 30 days in each month to even things up, and then have five months with 31 to make up the difference. So what gives?
According to sources like the Encyclopedia Brittanica, we’ve got an ancient Roman king named Numa Pompilius, pictured above, to thank for this strange discrepancy. Before Numa took over, the Roman calendar consisted of ten months–six with 30 days and four with 31. That calendar obviously would quickly get out of sync with the seasons, so Numa decided to add two months to the calendar–January and February–to bring the Roman calendar in line with the lunar year, which is 355 days long. Ancient Romans apparently were superstitious about even numbers, so Numa made all of the months 29 days long–except February, which had the unlucky number of 28 days.
The Julian calendar and the Gregorian calendar later changed the number of days in a year to adopt a solar year approach, because the lunar year followed by Numa is shorter than the actual amount of time needed for Earth to make its annual lap around the sun, which meant Numa’s calendar also got out of sync with the actual seasons. The Julian and Gregorian calendars added a few days to the months to make up the difference and adopted the leap year concept to make sure the calendars aligned with the seasons–but kept the twelve months, kept the name February, and continued to stick February with the fewest days.
It’s strange to think that, thousands of years later, the modern world still follows a calendar with an oddball month named for ancient Roman activities and a number of days assigned due to ancient Roman superstitions. But really, it all works out. Every northerner is grateful that dismal February is the shortest month–even during a leap year like this one. The sooner we get to March, the better.
It’s Groundhog Day! And in my head, I can hear Phil Hartman, the egotistical Pittsburgh weatherman cursed to relive Groundhog Day, over and over, until he becomes a better person, say: ”Well, its Groundhog Day . . . again.” Come to think of it, I’m hoping that I can find Groundhog Day, one of my favorite films, somewhere on TV tonight so I can watch it again. I’ve probably watched the movie almost as many times as Phil Hartman, so perfectly played by Bill Murray, reexperienced Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.
But I digress. The point I was going to make is that Groundhog Day creates a bit of division in our country. Across the northern part of the nation, when February 2 rolls around people have been exposed to seemingly endless weeks of cold, wet, sloppy, gloomy, soul-crushing winter weather. They care about whether Punxsutawney Phil emerges from his tree stump on Gobbler’s Knob to see his shadow because they desperately hope that he won’t see his shadow–thereby predicting an early spring.
In the southwestern desert areas, however, there’s really not much attention paid to Groundhog Day. There aren’t any groundhogs out here, for one thing, and in any case it’s typically sunny, and there’s not the prolonged exposure to crummy, dispiriting winter weather that makes otherwise rational people even consider the notion that a furry rodent might be able to accurately predict when spring will arrive. You could draw a line across the southern part of the country, sweeping in south Florida, the desert southwest and southern California, and call it the Groundhog Divide.
When temperatures fall below 32 degrees and the alligators can feel the waters start to freeze around them, they apparently have the instinct to move toward the surface, push their snouts above the water line so they can continue to breathe, close their eyes, and then allow the ice to form around them, leaving them suspended in the water. The technique is a form of brumation, which is the reptile equivalent of hibernation. Alligators evidently can survive for several days in that condition, alive but with body processes slowed.
It would be weird to see an alligator suspended in ice like that, but I would definitely not want to be around when the thaw came and the gators warm up. Those of us from northern climates know that cold weather can be an appetite stimulant.
The weather app shows that this morning’s temperature is 7 degrees with a nine-mile-an-hour breeze, which will knock the “wind chill” temperature a few degrees lower. We’ve been experiencing a severe cold snap over the past few days, the kind that hits Ohio at least once every winter. It’s the kind of cold that feels like a frigid slap in the face when you venture outside, making it painful to breath the frosty air. And even though every brain cell is urging you to stay inside at all costs, you know you’ve got to bundle up and head off to work.
And that is where I turn to an essential winter ally: coffee. Coffee before I venture into the cold, and especially coffee immediately upon reaching the office. Coffee, to delight the nose with scented steam from a freshly brewed cup and seize the tongue and the palate with the first gulp of sultry, brown, creamy goodness. Coffee, to provide that welcome, warming gush of hot liquid down the gullet, directly into the body’s core, to heat up the innards and fortify them against the chill. Coffee, to sharpen the senses, increase the alertness, and ensure that you tug those gloves on a bit tighter, cinch the headwear down, brace yourself for the outdoor arctic blast, and watch for thos icy patches on the sidewalks and crosswalks.
Yes, it’s pretty clear: coffee is the true, essential cold warrior. On a day like today, what would I do without it?
When a really significant sieche occurs, as happened earlier this month when 65-mile-and-hour winds hit the lake, the bed in the western part of the lake can be exposed–leaving huge rock formations that typically are water covered visible to the naked eye and creating opportunities for cool photographs like the one above. The biggest sieche in history was a 22-foot shift that occurred in 1844 and killed 78 people. This year’s sieche, fortunately, was not as destructive. But when a serious sieche occurs, be careful about venturing too far out onto the lake bed–because the water always comes back after the wind stops.
Rain in the Sonoran desert doesn’t follow predictable patterns–what weather does?–but the desert weather seems especially capricious. This year’s “monsoon season” apparently deposited a disappointing amount of rain, for example, which is why many locals were grateful for yesterday’s wet weather. The storm yesterday wasn’t a violent gullywasher, like a summer thunderstorm in the Midwest, but rather a steady rain that continued for the entire day, allowing the baked-hard ground to soften and soak up every last inch of precipitation for the benefit of the cactus and other desert plants. By my calculation, in our area we got about three inches of rain while the storm lingered–about one-fourth of the annual average in one day! That will help to make up for any shortfall from the monsoon season.
This is the first time I’ve experienced rain in the desert, and I walked out several times during the day to see if I could spot any elusive desert creatures that appear when it rains–like the spadefoot toad, which emerges from the ground when it hears the drumming of rain on the surface. Alas, I did not see any fauna as I walked under my umbrella, but in the coming days I’m going to pay close attention to the plant life and the mountains so see how the local flora reacts to some welcome gulps of water.
“Current,” the large, fishnet-like sculpture that has been hanging over the intersection of Gay and High Streets in downtown Columbus for the past six months, came down yesterday. The piece is simply not designed to endure a Midwestern winter, when it would be required to bear the accumulated weight of snow, sleet, freezing rain, and other seasonal weather delights. The sculpture will be put on a rotation in which it will be installed in the spring, removed on the cusp of winter, and then spend the frigid months in artistic hibernation.
The removal of the sculpture was a significant operation. The intersection was blocked off, a big tarp was spread over the asphalt, and multiple cranes unlatched the sculpture from its support moorings and slowly lowered the piece to the ground. A number of hard-hatted people supervised the work, and they must have done their job well, because the effort seemed to come off without a hitch.
I got used to seeing “Current” overhead, and the intersection seems a bit boring and barren without it. We’ll just have to look forward to seeing it again next spring, when the reemergence of “Current,” like the return of the swallows to San Juan Capistrano, tells us that warm weather lies ahead.
I was talking to a colleague yesterday when he remarked that Columbus had been enjoying “unusually good November weather.”
I had to pause for a moment, because in the Midwest the words “good” and “November” and “weather” are never heard together in a sentence. Such a statement is only arguably accurate if you add “unusually” as the initial modifier–but then you are basically damning with faint praise, like grudgingly conceding that a particular book isn’t the worst book you’ve ever read or acknowledging that a pitcher can throw the ball without falling down.
The observation about the weather was true, because we did have two decent days when conditions were dry, the sun shone, and the temperature hit the 60s. But using “November weather” as the point of comparison really doesn’t say much. And sure enough, by Friday classic November weather, seen in the photo above, had come again–wet, cold, and gray. If you can avoid one of those conditions, it’s a pretty good day, and if you can avoid two of them it’s a cause for celebration.
“November weather” unmistakably communicates that another winter is around the corner, and you might was well brace yourself for its arrival.
Webner House 