Yeah so Phil saw his shadow, so six more weeks of winter. Phil’s website says he has a 100% accuracy rate.
However, I looked for his accuracy rate elsewhere and found:
“According to Stormfax.com, Punxsutawney Phil has only been correct approximately 39% of the time. Of course, long range forecasts can be difficult to predict for the human forecaster.”
So Phil’s statistical accuracy says that we have a 61% chance of an early spring, not so bad. I’ll take those odds.
Happy Groundhog Day. 🙂
There is a possibility of it snowing a little overnight. Which is too bad, since I will miss being able to watch the snow falling down. I love watching snow falling down.
For many years I did not have good access to a window where I could look out and enjoy the bit of nature that exists in the cityscape. I go out as much as possible and bike as much as possible, but being disabled means that I don’t get enough of the outdoors.
For the last year-and-a-half I have lived in an apartment complex with my windows looking out onto a courtyard with trees and a small view of the street.I noticed that I don’t open my blinds much in the winter here and decided a few weeks ago to do that more. One day it was snowing and it was heavenly to eat my lunch, watch some tv shows, and read for hours on end as the snow was falling down.
I realized today that there hasn’t been a lot of snow this winter. Most of the snow that did fall was overnight snow. Snow isn’t forecast for the next week, though of course that can change.
I realized that I was jonesing for some pretty snowfall.I found something to help me, it is something on Netflix called Winter Wonderland for Your Home. It has winter scenes with thick snow falling down. It makes me happy and it makes me feel content. It is not as good as watching the real thing, but does pretty good at giving me the same feelings. 🙂
Yesterday it was snowing. It started about noon, with medium sized flakes. I was bummed again, thinking how much I would love to be able to take some photos and post them here, but knew that the flakes, no matter how big, just don’t seem to show up well on any photos I have taken, on my digital camera and on my phone. I did take some photos and checked, just in case, but as usual, didn’t get a good shot of the snow coming down. The wind chill was still wicked cold out, about -15 degree F., with a wicked wind as well, so it was definitely a stay inside day for me.
Nevertheless I decided to do some good things for myself and enjoy my day as much as possible. I made lunch, burgers with a gluten free bun. I had bought some pink lady apples and found that I really loved them, so had one of those after lunch. I read and then watched some stuff online, while sitting on my bed, looking out the window at the snow falling down. It was bliss.
Make much of something small.
The pouring-out of tea,
a drying flower’s shadow on the wall
from last week’s sad bouquet.
A fact: it isn’t summer any more.
Say that December sun
is pitiless, but crystalline
and strikes like a bell.
Say it plays colours like a glockenspiel.
It shows the dust as well,
the elemental sediment
your broom has missed,
and lights each grain of sugar spilled
upon the tabletop, beside
pistachio shells, peel of a clementine.
Slippers and morning papers on the floor,
and wafts of iron heat from rumbling rads,
can this be all? No, look — here comes the cat,
with one ear inside out.
Make much of something small.
Sunday morning at 3 am it was 50 degrees! I even rode my bike to the library and the store in the late afternoon and actually said to myself gee 44 degrees, that feels kind of cold.
Then this afternoon it was 22 degrees with a windchill of 8, so it feels like 8 degrees F. outside. Seriously it was too much for my precious little bod to handle.
Thank God that I had my brand new winter coat that I bought for $8 and was toasty inside it. I forgot to wear socks and didn’t have warm enough pants, cause I forgot to check how cold it was outside online before leaving the apartment and I didn’t know the polar wind was here, but will be properly dressed for polar weather the next time I go outside to wait for a bus and/or ride my bike.
What a horrible difference 36 hours can make. I’m inside and still warming up from my forays by bike/bus to therapy this afternoon. Not quite toasty yet, but working on it.
I don’t care how many poets can write great poems about winter and I’ve read a number of them in the past month or so, I am not thinking poetically about it right about now.
Falling Leaves and Early Snow
In the years to come they will say,
“They fell like the leaves
In the autumn of nineteen thirty-nine.”
November has come to the forest,
To the meadows where we picked the cyclamen.
The year fades with the white frost
On the brown sedge in the hazy meadows,
Where the deer tracks were black in the morning.
Ice forms in the shadows;
Disheveled maples hang over the water;
Deep gold sunlight glistens on the shrunken stream.
Somnolent trout move through pillars of brown and gold.
The yellow maple leaves eddy above them,
The glittering leaves of the cottonwood,
The olive, velvety alder leaves,
The scarlet dogwood leaves,
Most poignant of all.
In the afternoon thin blades of cloud
Move over the mountains;
The storm clouds follow them;
Fine rain falls without wind.
The forest is filled with wet resonant silence.
When the rain pauses the clouds
Cling to the cliffs and the waterfalls.
In the evening the wind changes;
Snow falls in the sunset.
We stand in the snowy twilight
And watch the moon rise in a breach of cloud.
Between the black pines lie narrow bands of moonlight,
Glimmering with floating snow.
An owl cries in the sifting darkness.
The moon has a sheen like a glacier.
So they are saying that the groundhog saw his shadow. Six more weeks of Winter. Well no matter what he sees we usually get six more weeks of Winter.
I am trying to stay positive. Last year we had more than six more weeks of winter. Basically we had two-and-a-half months of Winter after the groundhog and an early Autumn. Last year was unlucky when it came to having good weather.
I tried to ignore the fact that it was 2013, mostly I lived in a sort of denial about the unlucky number. I’m so happy that we are into a new year. Many inners in the system have expressed an issue with the unlucky number over the last few years, so I was not happy thinking about living a whole year with the unlucky number and how anxious they would be over it.
Well 2013 turned out to be a very bad year, well at least, the first half of the year was very very bad indeed. The second half has been luckier and very healing. And I have spent that time climbing out of the nuclear crater that the first six months caused in my life. I’m really looking forward to the rest of this new year, even if it includes six more weeks of Winter.
Saturday brought the first snow of the season. I love the first snow. It was pretty, and thankfully amounted to only an inch or so. It’s easy to appreciate it’s beauty when there is only a little at a time.
I had heard that it was going to snow Saturday. They said that perhaps not in my area. They kept saying that for days. Well it decided to come. I was sleeping. And when I got up I decided to go back to bed. It was comforting and restful.
I love the snow. I only wish it was like this most of the winter.
We got about a foot of snow recently. I love to sit and watch it coming down. I really do love snow.
I hate trying to get around in the snow and ice, especially the ice. I really do hate the snow and ice on the roads and sidewalks. I plan my life around the snowfall. Sometimes I do that about the rain too, but I try to not take a rain forecast and plan from that, but if it is raining all day I have been known to not go out biking.
So I was out shoveling the walk from the house out to the sidewalk. It was pretty snowy, cold, and windy, not a very nice experience. The wind was blowing hard and so the snow was coming down at an angle. One of those angles that hit the snow in your eyes and makes you hope for spring.
Suddenly I heard it. One of those spring birds. It was singing. I hear them in the warmer months when I ride around the lake. They sound kind of like someone doing morse code, odd dots and dashes, uneven. I love to hear them when I am riding. I stopped and listened.
After I went inside I kept the door open, with the screen door closed, just for a bit, so I could hear the bird singing.
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invinsible summer.
~ Albert Camus
Kate Is Rising 
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