Seasons - January 8, 2012

It was another day up in the low 40s °F. I took Anya to the dog park and for a couple walks. It was beautiful, so of course I spent the day doing a little deep cleaning...

Why do we call this a season? Why is this winter? I've gotten so used to thinking of seasons as beginning on the Equinoxes and Solstices, that I was happy to discover that there are alternate seasons used by other groups: there's meteorological seasons, which (since Roman times) have been declared as beginning on the first of December, March, June and September. These make more sense. So does the Celtic and East Asian traditional seasons, which are reckoned (approximately) from the cross quarter days, halfway between the solstices and equinoxes: Samhain, around November 1, is the beginning of winter; Imholc, around February 1, is the beginning of spring; Beltane, around May 1, is the beginning of summer; and Lughnasa, around August 1, is the beginning of fall.

But these don't really reflect Minnesota's "typical" weather, at least how I think of it. The first snowfall that really sticks, it seems to me, falls close to Thanksgiving, and snowcover is the real mark of winter. OK, maybe not this year, but usually. Historically. Then, it doesn't really feel like spring until you see buds and growing things. So somewhere around the first of April. Summer is when you're done planting, which really should be around Memorial Day. Autumn is harder: Labor Day is such a marker in terms of summer vacation, it's hard to resist as a marker, but seeing the leaves start to turn, somewhere around mid-September is maybe a more appropriate point. So, we have uneven seasons: two-month springs, three-and-a-half month summers, two-and-a-half month falls, and winters so long you just want to die.

I was interested to see the idea of ecological seasons, based on broad growing patterns in temperate regions (in the northern hemisphere, of course):

• Prevernal (ca.1 March–1 May)
• Vernal (ca.1 May–15 June)
• Estival (ca.15 June–15 August)
• Serotinal (ca.15 August–15 September)
• Autumnal (ca.15 September–1 November)
• Hibernal (ca.1 November–1 March

I wish I could find the exact quote from Garrison Keillor to the effect that we have more than four seasons in Minnesota. We have 29 seasons, including the three days of spring that appear mysteriously in January, the discouraging reappearance of winter for two days in mid-April, and so on.

And in Minnesota there are of course only two seasons: winter and road-construction season.