Vernal Equinox – allegedly
March 19, 2013
According to my diary, tomorrow is the Vernal or Spring Equinox. I am not convinced. By which I mean, while the evenings are certainly growing lighter, we are having a week of snow, east winds, hail and more snow. It’s very pretty but not much fun on the school run! Or indeed for people with outdoor jobs, such as our neighbour who spent half the morning moving sheep from one blizzard-swept pasture to a more sheltered one, and then had to spend the rest of the morning repairing a fence in the teeth of the snow.
Our clocks go forward to British Summer Time on Easter Day, only ten days away, so I hope that the weather gets its act together. Meanwhile, here is a favourite sycamore of mine, looking very un-vernal.
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It’s been the oddest seasonal switch period. We were 90 yesterday with horrid humidity ( the dog drooped during her walk) Today a cooler front dropped temps – and added winds. We are supposed to get even cooler as the week goes along.
This is a gorgeous picture.
Have you heard about the Blue Trees art installations by that Australian artist? He’s in town this week and Houston and Galveston will be “painting” tree trunks blue to raise awareness/money to replace trees lost by drought and hurricane. (I could have used this tree as an illustration for that post.) You might enjoy his website for the photography
It’s just a beautiful picture ( worth repeating that!)
Thanks, I was happy with this picture. You are quite right, this tree looks blue in the snow shadows. I hadn’t heard about the blue trees in TX though! I can hardly remember what 90 degrees feels like….sigh…
we had the start of DST last week but winter didn’t get the hint and we are getting a pile of snow. However it is a last gasp…it is isn’t it?
Yes, yes, please say it’s the last gasp of winter!
The colours in your photograph are just sublime.
Thanks, though I can’t claim the credit. It was just sublime light that day.
That is an almost unearthly image, DB. Wonderful.
According to an article on the BBC website yesterday, March so far has been colder than either December or January and if it goes on like this, which it has every appearance of doing, it will be the second coldest March on record. Brrr!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21857649
I was lucky to be out with my camera at a particularly beautiful moment.
Oh my goodness, this month is just getting worse and worse, isn’t it! We have more snow than we had at Christmas!
Lovely: A Tuesday tree– a little late but with such weather I am surprised you could take the picture.
A Tuesday tree indeed, but they have been so rare recently that I was embarrassed to advertise it as such! I must come clean and confess that I took this photo a couple of weeks ago – back when we still saw the sun sometimes…
It’s the absence of sun that’s so hard. It’s as if we have a grey lid clamped over Scotland. I believe there was a bit of sunshine this week but since I was at work I missed it! Apparently the bright side is that daffodils will bloom for longer…
I quite agree. We wake up to day after day of snowflakes leaking from leaden skies. We had no sun last week but I did spot a tiny scrap of blue sky today: I’d almost forgotten that there was such a thing! Just think how much we will relish spring warmth when it does arrive, though. And the snowdrops – which last year were done before the end of Feb – are still looking pristinely beautiful.