Susan Says

Daylight Savings Time has begun, so our sunshine lingers an hour longer each evening and we're certainly enjoying its rays.

According to the calendar, spring is only about a week away but it certainly seems to be unfolding slowly this year. The daffodils that looked so perky a couple of weeks ago had quite a setback from the 3 inches of snow but a few of the blooms are beginning to open now. Tiny bluets dot the yard and hyacinths are starting to emerge beside the cellar. Some of the snow stuck around over a week on the north side of the house but, finally, temps have climbed enough to melt it.

On the warmer days, we've ventured out to call on friends. A couple of weeks ago, we dropped by to visit a family which had health problems. Arriving just as they were enjoying a late breakfast, we admired artwork created by the men of the family. Meanwhile, the lady of the house prepared tasty Swedish pancakes topped with a mixed berry sauce and insisted that each of us sit down and eat one.

That weekend we visited another friend who owns horses and I got to pet their velvety noses. Then last Thursday, I accompanied Jim when he visited friends southwest of town. I'd recently sent the wife a tiny bell for her collection and she gave me a few magazines. I didn't need any more reading material but a couple contained articles on organizing and controlling clutter, which I surely need to do, so I justified accepting them.

I have a few outdoor projects I want to accomplish when the weather warms a bit more. Our mailbox has gotten very rusty and I plan to get out the black spray paint and give it a new coat. I need to clean out the iris beds, and I have four o'clock seeds I brought from Aunt Leta's to plant in the flower beds in front of the house.

I've been hoping we'd get enough rain to cause the county burn ban to be lifted, but the light rain we got on Saturday didn't provide us much moisture.

Popular columnist and writer, Fred Starr, was fascinated by the hill man's preoccupation with the weather. He related in his book "Of These Hills and Us" that when he moved to the Ozarks in the mid 1930s, the weather was the usual topic of the "sit and spit" club. Where he came from, he said, folks let the weatherman look after the rain. But the Ozark natives, in the midst of an especially dry summer, got all "hot and bothered" (Starr's words) about the drought, asking each newcomer to their circle, "When do you think it'll rain?" Answers were quite varied, from the fellow who replied, "At the end of this dry spell" to those who swore by the signs of the moon.

One of the men who had faith in the moon signs noted that it nearly always rained around the change of the moon, but Starr pointed out that the moon changes every seven days so any rain would have to come within three and a half days of a moon change. "The moon has no more to do with it raining than I do," he told the gathering. "If it did, why is it raining in the Amazon Valley now, and not raining here, when we have the same moon as they do?"

Starr admitted he didn't get the connection between the moon signs and the rains, so one of the fellows asked him, "What's your sign, mister?" Wanting to be accepted by the group, he tried to be funny and commented, "I go by the Indian sign."

"What's that?" they wanted to know. "When it's cloudy all around and pouring down in the middle," he told them with a smile. His answer failed to put a grin on even one face. The farmers, whose tomato vines and corn plants were drying up before they could bear, assured him the drought was no joking matter. But Starr, coming from the sandstorms of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, said he wasn't about to let it stampede him.

Susan Holland is a life-long resident of the west side of Benton County and a regular writer for the Westside Eagle Observer. She may be contacted by email at [email protected].. Opinions expressed are those of the author.