sweet auburn | 2024 volume II
I f you took a poll of people ’ s least favorite season , I suspect that winter would come out on top . When asked why , you ’ d get answers about cold , snow , and ice but also the lack of light . This is not to say there aren ’ t plenty of people who love winter and there ’ s arguably a lot to enjoy about the cold season . Winter-sports enthusiasts , snow lovers , and folks who just like to nest in the extended darkness will embrace the time of the year when our part of the world is tilted away from the Sun . I think light and its predictability — even its predictable diminishment in winter — are underappreciated .
You can engage your own psychology if winter gets you down . Remember that the winter solstice is the bottom of the light curve . When the winter solstice arrives early in the morning of December 21 st , the earliest sunset will have already occurred . The winter solstice itself is also neither the earliest sunset nor the latest sunrise , it ’ s only the shortest gap between sunup and sundown . There is light gain in those final 10 days of December though it takes a keen eye to appreciate it . The additional solar glow will soon quicken , reaching over a minute a day in early January and almost 3 minutes by mid-March . Astronomy and climatology are more conventional metrics of the seasons , but observing them through luminescence allows us to feel what ’ s going on in nature unconstrained by less meaningful markers .
Personally , I begin to muse of spring in February , around the time that daylight increases to 10 hours . Solar winter , the period of greatest darkness , runs from about November 5th till February 5th , with solar spring arriving thereafter . Many people notice when in early February the days start getting longer and the sun waits until after 5:00 p . m . to slip below the horizon . The solar strength , too , feels different . Getting into a car parked in the Sun , for example , you might perceive that spring warmth has begun to arrive .
At this point in the year , indoor house-plants will start responding , pushing out new growth and needing a first taste of plant food to recover from winter dormancy . Outside , certain animals are mating and the buds are swelling . In a typical year , Pussy Willow , Witch Hazel , and even Skunk Cabbage are emerging . The latter , creating its own heat to burn through the ice and snow , betrays a first push toward a warmer season .
Root activity is generally thought to cease when soil temperatures dip to 20 degrees or lower . The quiescence is not always predictable , however . A deep early snow cover can leave the ground warm and unfrozen with ongoing root activity , whereas cold weather with no snow can create more root damage . Roots can even temporarily wake up as soil temperatures rise to 32 degrees or higher in spite of the dormancy above .
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