AN IMPOSSUMBLY LONG WINTER

Where is Spring, you say! Here we have daffodils, pansies, even the forsythia is opening… the late camellias are starting and I swear I saw a little color on a couple early azaleas. I did! But if you listened to that dumb groundhog up in Philadelphia, well, I am sure you must be disappointed. You can see a picture of this liar on this blog: http://thefrogandpenguinn.blogspot.com/2013/03/dont-shoot-piano-player.html.

Very possumly Phil should be retired – a suggestion that he can’t refuse, kind of retirement… I, the Onley Proud member of the Possum Prognosticator’s Club, President of Possum Patrol (always on the lookout for lying muskrats), and possumly the most accurate Predictor of a Pussumly early spring… I got laughed at, guffawed at even, when I said Spring would indeed be late this year. HA! But who gets the last chortle? MOI! As I curl up all warm and toasty in my heated nest down the street from those nasty muskrats, snug but not smug… Oh, no, not me… I remember the disbelief when I saw MY shadow and ran for dear life back into my snugness on the carport Pledging not to come back out until spring really arrives… or some delicious cat food gets placed in the dish a couple feet outside my door. Whichever comes first. We possums may get blinded easily by headlights but we’re not fools! My human CO (Can Opener) still has her snow shovel out just a few feet on the other side of the heated water dish. She even has a de-icer in the ground level birdbath, yes indeedy.

But I digress… Just how accurate is that dumb groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil? According to StormFax Weather Almanac, Phil has been right 39 percent of the time since 1887. It is amazing that he still has a job. I, on the other hand can never be replaced. Not only is my Prediction record Perfect, but where else can you find an animal this cute who eats copperheads for snacks, catches mice and rats and all sorts of buglies and does NOT ever get rabies? Can you beat that with a stick? Impossumble. 

In spite of all the wet weather we have had here, and I do mean wet – I mean, look at the yard! In the summertime this is where grass gets cut! We would need pontoons on the mower to get thru here! Or, maybe we could sell it to some unsuspecting Yankee as waterfront property, huh? No?

My human will tell you, “It always snows on the daffodils.” I bet you can check back to March of each year and find a picture of some bright yellow beauties bowed over with a layer of snow. My human also says, “Count your Cards,” to see how long winter will last. Translation: the more Cardinals at your feeders, the longer the winter. Unh huh, check it out. I taught her all these things. I did. She is not as impossumble as most humans. I am right Proud of her. Pay attention to Nature I told her. The more berries, the colder the winter.  Then there is the nutty predictor – the more nuts, the worse the winter will be, or the thicker shells, or the fatter… you name it.  Whatever. They are talking about edible nuts, aren’t they? Not humans… most of them are nuts, it seems. The point is, it is 4 days after the vernal equinox, and if you look real hard, it is snowing. Either that or these trees got dandruff!

(If you were a possum you would find that hairlarious!)

OK, so it is only 5 snowflakes an hour right now. Hang on. Just wait! You’ll see!

GROUNDHOG’S DAY 2011 and 2 VISITORS

THIS IS THE DAY when so many of you got so much snow and ice… my Cousin Sandy measured 51 inches of snow and ice on the ground in her back yard. Friends wrote to me of taking an axe out to chop thru the ice on top of the snow to get to something they could shovel. Their stories were amazing as were the temperatures… one cousin had –8 degrees F, while another was at 34 degrees above  in Alaska where it should have been below zero.

Here, on the Eastern Shore, we had been warned of “significant rainfall,” and got about half an inch. But most wonderful of all, the temps soared to 67 degrees. 67 DEGREES!!!!! OMG! After a hectic morning of DR visits and errands,  I headed out to the yard to quickly plant the 2 flats of pansies I got at Bobbie’s on Sunday – a Better Late Than Never Christmas Gift!   I worked as fast as I could getting the pansies in around the birdbath close to where the bright red coleus and strobilanthes were last summer, and in the Circle, around the little critters’ graves. The ground was soft and wet, still lots of leaves on the ground and the kind of debris one has after a rough winter.

I love pansies, and part of the fun of living on the Eastern Shore is having pansies all winter and into the spring. These pansies had been sitting at Bobbie’s for a while waiting for all of us to find a time when we could get together. Each time we planned lunch, it snowed. The first time I told Bobbie I couldn’t come up because it was going to snow, she laughed at me thinking I was making a joke. I wasn’t. That was the beginning of our bitter cold, snowy winter. So, the pansies sat and waited.

Our morning started with a visit with the Onley Possum Weather prognosticator… Opie Possum (or O P –Onley Possum, Only Possum! Official Predictor of GOOD weather)… We do not have Groundhogs here on the shore. They would drown if they tried to burrow in our soil, too close to sea level. We also do not have chipmunks or porcupines or bears. We also don’t have rocks or stones, in spite of the pictures of them in my garden, unless they are brought in from other places. Most of my stones are from PA, a few from Maine… I digress, again. Anyway, Opie showed up for a bedtime snack to see if there was anything left from breakfast, since possum time is the reverse of people time. As I saw him saunter across the yard toward the cat food left-overs, I made note of there being NO SHADOW! Spring is right around the corner! YEA! Of course, that corner just might be 6 weeks away, who knows. But Opie was getting a snack as I hurried for my camera. So you will just have to trust me on the NO shadow part. 

Anyway, Possum in bed, Pansies in the ground, I hurried inside to get cleaned up for yet another Dr’s appointment when I heard a flurry of activity out the front window. My new resident hawk was back looking for HIS snack, but so far, for all the times I have seen him out here, I have yet to find any feathers around. I have never seen him make off with any little critters. Now, he might have caught some of the mice that have built their little tunnels in the ground under the feeders… I don’t know.

Handsome fellow, isn’t he? Just posing for his mug shot. Um, turn the other way, please.

Thank you.

I told him to head on down to Rat Trap Creek where there are a couple of muskrats, so I hear, that pretend to be weather prognosticators, but, frankly, I think they are phonies, just like the Pungoteague Possum they talk about on the radio. WE all know that was roadkill JD found and pretended was a live possum whispering in his ear that Spring was on its way. What’s with these people? The official weather Possums have always lived right here and we always give them a special treat on Possum Day. But we also protect them from the press and being taken advantage of by reporters like Puxatawney Phil. That is animal abuse! Poor thing.

From time to time, friends bring me their baby possums to be groomed as weather prognosticators.

Some work out, others, well, others just won’t have anything to do with it.

And that’s the end of this tail. 

GROUND HOG'S DAY

More Pagan origins!

Belated Happy Ground Hog’s Day!

Do you know the history of Ground Hog’s Day, or why indeed we use a ground hog for the prediction? Or most important, how accurate is he (she?)?
In 1723, the Delaware (more correctly called the Lenapé) Indians settled Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania as a campsite halfway between the Allegheny and the Susquehanna Rivers. The town is 90 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, at the intersection of Route 36 and Route 119. The (Lenapes) considered groundhogs honorable ancestors. According to the original creation beliefs of the (Lenape) Indians, their forebears began life as animals in "Mother Earth" and emerged centuries later to hunt and live as men.
The name Punxsutawney comes from the Indian name for the location"ponksad-uteney" which means "the town of the sandflies." The name woodchuck comes from the Indian legend of "Wojak,the groundhog" considered by them to be their ancestral grandfather.
When German settlers arrived in the 1700s, they brought a tradition known as Candlemas Day, which has an early origin in the pagan celebration of Imbolc. It came at the mid-point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. Superstition held that if the weather was fair, the second half of Winter would be stormy and cold. For the early Christians in Europe, it was the custom on Candlemas Day for clergy to bless candles and distribute them to the people in the dark of Winter. A lighted candle was placed in each window of the home. The day's weather continued to be important. If the sun came out February 2, halfway between Winter and Spring, it meant six more weeks of wintry weather.
The earliest American reference to Groundhog Day can be found at the Pennsylvania Dutch Folklore Center at Franklin and Marshall College:
February 4, 1841 - from Morgantown, Berks County (Pennsylvania) storekeeper James Morris' diary..."Last Tuesday, the 2nd, was Candlemas day, the day on which, according to the Germans, the Groundhog peeps out of his winter quarters and if he sees his shadow he pops back for another six weeks nap, but if the day be cloudy he remains out, as the weather is to be moderate."

The groundhog's seasonal forecasting accuracy is somewhat low. Phil's Winter prognostications have been correct only 39% of the time.

So it would seem to me that we might want to reverse the prediction, eh?

Most of this info came from http://www.stormfax.com/ghogday.htm.

Here on the shore, we do not have any ground hogs... nope, not one woodchuck to be found. Reason? No place for them to burrow. Well, that is not true, let me say it this way, we are so close to sea level, there are times, when we have had a normal rainy season, that digging down just a foot or two, say to plant a tree or camellia, will give you a hole that quickly fills with water. In other words, the poor devils would drown here. Guess that is why we don't have chipmunks, either, huh? I do miss the chippies.

Well, then, just what do we do for Ground Hog Day?????

WE USE A POSSUM, THAT'S WHAT WE DO!!!!!! (What did you expect me to say???) And MY possum says spring is on its way! But, she reminded me, don't forget, it always snows on the daffodils. Keep that in mind!

(Last year's daffodil snow.)

BTW - we made a quick run over to Virginia Beach yesterday - haven't been over there in 3 years. That's pitiful, isn't it? Closest city of any real size and we never get there. Sigh. Anyway, we were 60 miles south of here and there were daffodils in bloom in one front yard. I am glad I took my eyes off the road for a second to see them! That was exciting!

They say we will have a couple of days in the 60s this week. That will be wonderful. I desperately need to get some work done out in the yard. Even the bird feeders are empty!

My weeks are running short on days lately, tho. Do yours ever do that? Last week was so packed full, I am ashamed of how dirty my house is and I am so far behind in my classes... But, I got a call from Hospice and had to go. And I am back at school... yep, you read that right. I know I was reminded that I said you couldn't pay me to go back - well, they aren't, paying me, that is. I am a volunteer. I am tutoring a couple 2nd graders, bless their hearts. So, life just got busier...

Anyway, I will do my best to get caught up.

Fellow bloggers - I am trying to catch up with you, too - that is how I spend my lunch time... but if it is warm, I eat out in the yard in the sun! I am reading, tho, honest!

OK, can I go back to bed now??????