A SURE SIGN OF SPRING

Sure enough, signs of Spring!
The rebud buds are about to pop and the anemones are already strutting their stuff - as much as much as a flower flatter than moss can strut its stuff.
We walk and talk quietly around these little flowers because they are as big as they can be and they are doing all they can do. We just appreciate the fact that the ground temperature is high enough and that there is enough sunlight to make the little bulbs announce the arrival of Spring.
PLUS, on Sunday we get our hour of evening light back. Daylight Savings Time arrives and we have some more LIGHT at the close of the day.
The idea of daylight saving was first conceived by Benjamin Franklin during his sojourn as an American delegate in Paris in 1784, in an essay, An Economical Project.
Some of Franklin's friends, inventors of a new kind of oil lamp, were so taken by the scheme that they continued corresponding with Franklin even after he returned to America. 
The idea was first advocated seriously by London builder William Willett (1857-1915) in the pamphlet, Waste of Daylight (1907), that proposed advancing clocks 20 minutes on each of four Sundays in April, and retarding them by the same amount on four Sundays in September. As he was taking an early morning a ride through Petts Wood, near Croydon, Willett was struck by the fact that the blinds of nearby houses were closed, even though the sun was fully risen. When questioned as to why he didn't simply get up an hour earlier, Willett replied with typical British humor, "What?" In his pamphlet "The Waste of Daylight" he wrote:


Everyone appreciates the long, light evenings. Everyone laments their shortage as Autumn approaches; and everyone has given utterance to regret that the clear, bright light of an early morning during Spring and Summer months is so seldom seen or used.


Not everyone is taken with the idea of the value of more sunlight at the end of the day. You have to love this comment made in 1947:


I don't really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves. (Robertson Davies, The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, 1947, XIX, Sunday.)
To find out how the world participates in DST just hop on over to www.timeanddate.com.
I think it is just more fun in the summertime! © tim www.timjohnsonphoto.com