A Spring Proposal

It is Spring, correct?   Because ProfessorRoush is having a difficult time this morning discerning a difference from the Winter he experienced just a few days ago.  On this, the fourth day past the Spring equinox of 2013, it is currently 27°F in Manhattan, Kansas and the wind is out of due North at 15mph with gusts up to 22mph.  We have, as of last count, 4.6 inches estimated new snow on the ground since 7:00 p.m. yesterday.

Enough for statistics.  Mark Twain, once said there "are three kinds of lies, lies, damn lies, and statistics."  Well, at least most scholars attribute it to Mark Twain; Twain, himself, claimed to be quoting Benjamin Disraeli but the statement cannot be found in Disraeli's private or published works.  So the authorship of this quote may be as misleading as are statistics themselves.  And anyway, Mark Twain was just a pen name for Samuel Clements; why do we attribute quotes to Mark Twain instead of Samuel Clements? Anyone?

Enough for both Mark Twain and statistics.  What the statistics of the daily weather hide is that, as you can plainly see, my little "sun face" on the garage wall looks a little blue at the moment.   And that, as you can see in the picture below, part of the ground in my garden is almost clear and other parts have drifts over a foot tall.  And that, if I take a step outside the door to pick up the Sunday morning paper, I'm liable to freeze solid in my boots.  Of course it would be a minor miracle that the Sunday morning paper has even been delivered.  I always scoff at television meteorologists who stress "wind chill" data to scare their viewers, but the wind chill for me outside right now is in the 10°F range.  The real joke is on me this morning. because I moved my "new" tractor up to the garage in preparation to clear snow this morning.  I'm convinced, however, that if I sit on it and drive it outside right now, the next time my carcass will be discovered is in 10,000 years when some scientist cores into the glacier now forming on my driveway pad.

And enough, by the way, of whining by the global warming crowd.  Take notice, I'm not going to listen to any such decrepit creatures for a few days, and maybe not until August.  I've been suspicious of their sincerity ever since they started talking about "climate change" instead of "global warming" anyway.  It is pretty tough to convince me that we're in the midst of global warming when this year's real Spring is over a month behind last year, whatever the calendar may say. I propose here and now that we do away with calendars and equinoxes and go back to "Earth-centric" time.  Copernicus was a heretic and a lawyer and his opinions should have been more suspect even in his own time.  How about if all gardening folk agree that it's not Spring until the daffodils bloom, wherever you are?  Heck, we have time zones whose strict interpretations are enforced by our Federal government, why not "Spring Zones"?  They'd just run north and south instead of east to west, so that's no big deal, especially to those gardeners who never know what direction they're facing and plant sunflowers on the north sides of their houses.  And for those of you who live in USDA Zones so hot that daffodils don't thrive, who cares when Spring is for you?  It's always just Spring or Summer for you.  You can say that it's Spring when you can't fry an egg on the sidewalk and Summer when you can.  Here in the Flint Hills, ProfessorRoush is not celebrating Spring until he sees a yellow daffodil in his garden!   Which is evidently going to be awhile yet.