Unloved February brings its many shoots of hope

It was only last week that a colleague of mine asked me if it was correct to refer to February’s first day as the beginning of Spring, reminding me of one the great little whimsical debates that has raged on down through the years.

All our meteorological friends will point to the first day of March as the start of Spring based on the empirical data of December, January and February, being the three coldest months in the Northern Hemisphere.

However, if we go back to our Celtic calendar and roots, the first day of Spring or Earrach is always February 1st, or St. Brigid’s Day, as many of us remember it as, in an era when saints seemed to be a lot more important than they are nowadays.

We were taught from our first days at school – ‘low infants’ was our official classification – that the crows would start building their nests on the first morning of February, as if our feathered friends had a calendar penned up on the nearest tree.

There are also of course the stargazers who base their seasons of change on the arrival of our solstices and equinoxes. For them, Spring begins with the equinox of March 21 (approximately); Summer starts on the day of the solstice (June 21); Autumn rolls in with the September 21 equinox; while Winter starts with the December 21 solstice.

Given that our Winter gone by (or at least most of it, again depending on which calendar you give allegiance to) has largely been a fairly benign one temperature wise, it was no great surprise to see a little spurt of growth on the lawns. Well, maybe not a spurt, but still a noticeable seam of greenness.

While the evidence on temperatures of our learned friends in the Met. Office is incontrovertible, I’m always inclined to go with the traditional view that Spring begins on February’s first day, when at last the first little signs are beginning to emerge that light is beginning to bite back at the season of darkness that has enveloped us for the past two to three months.

Like Paddy Kavanagh’s unloved dandelions on the headlands, February has often tended to be an unappreciated time of year, but it does provide many shoots of hope in terms of brighter days lying ahead.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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