hackberry
Vernal Equinox 2020
Well, Spring has finally sprung and not a moment too soon. I’m sitting in my Adirondack chair, with my bare feet on the ground, watching the sunset through the limbs of my Hackberry tree. Yes, I have short feet. Shut up. (All photos are my personal collection. ©)
According to the Farmers’ Almanac 1818, this is the earliest First Day of Spring in 124 years. Yahoo! Maybe some warm, beautiful weather will offset the corona beer virus and this needless, manufactured hysteria that has appeared with it.
Hackberry in the background.
I did a Vernal Equinox post last year when it coincided with the Full Worm Moon. In our area, it was as high as 80° and I was out in it. My buddy Ray had some errands to run so, off we went to the county north of us. Once the errands were completed, we headed to downtown Roxboro for lunch & a minor visit to their museum (pictures coming tomorrow).
From Farmers’ Almanac 1818:
[Spring] will occur at 11:50 p.m. EDT for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere […]. Traditionally, we celebrate the first day of spring on March 21 but, astronomers and calendar manufacturers, alike, now say that the spring season starts on March 20th, in all time zones in North America. And, in 2020, it’s even a day earlier than that…something that hasn’t happened since 1896.
There are a few reasons why seasonal dates can vary from year to year. The first is that a year is not an even number of days and neither are the seasons. Another reason is that the earth’s elliptical orbit is changing its orientation (skew), which causes the earth’s axis to constantly point in a different direction, called precession. Since the seasons are defined as beginning at strict 90-degree intervals, these positional changes affect the time the earth reaches each 90-degree location in its orbit around the sun. The pull of gravity from the other planets also affects the location of the earth in its orbit.
Cheers! ~Vic
Additional Interesting Reading:
First Day of Spring (The Old Farmer’s Almanac 1792)
Shutterbug Saturday: Feathers 4.0
In my last post on March 2, I was talking about sitting under my Hackberry tree and getting pelted with debris from a little woodpecker above me. I tried to get some shots of him but, they weren’t clear enough. My S7 just doesn’t do well with distance. That’s OK. I have other stuff.
02-19-2019
04-16-2019
Shutterbug Saturday: Feathers 3.0
I love watching and listening to the birds. They are fun and fascinating. A few evenings ago, I was sitting in one of my Adirondack chairs I have in my yard. They are underneath a very large Hackberry tree. This tree is huge and old. As I was enjoying the sunset and journaling, I heard tapping…above my head. Then, I noticed dust-like material gathering in my lap, my pages and on my phone (and, no doubt, on my head). I looked directly above me, which was not an easy task in a high-back chair. Yes. It was a small woodpecker. This little thing had the entire tree to beat its beak into but, decided to do its routine…directly above me. I struggled to get shots but, I got a few. That will be for another post in the future.
Invasion of the Buzzards
03-07-2017
Sadly, all of those trees had to come down last year.
03-03-2013
But, a Cooper’s Hawk or a Sharp-Shinned, I’m not sure.
12-12-2008
Cosmic-Observation 