Winter Solstsice

[Carol]

Catlady:
> I figured that Carol in Arizona and I in Southern California are not
> well suited to decide based on weather when mysterious seasons like
> Winter and Summer begin. Even the familiar seasons like Rain and Fire
> are acting crazy lately - Fire Season is supposed to run July through
> October, not all year long!
> 
> But if a person living in a more conventional climate wanted to
> proclaim that Autumn begins with the first frost, Autumn would begin
> at different times in different places, which is not useful for
> calendars that will be distributed all over a continent.
> 
> I don't know how to define the weather of the beginning of other
> seasons. First Flower could be Spring, except that my New York
memory is that fairly often there's a warm spell in February, and the
redbud trees put out their red buds, and then there's another cold
snap that kills all the buds... and in April, when the sun has
definitely come out and melted the snow, and the grass has grown back,
with flowers, there's always a surprise blizzard in April.
>
Carol:
Since this list is an offshoot of HPfGu, we can always go by the
seasons in Britain. <grin!> It's midwinter there, I think, meaning
that the calendar is right (for them).

All of this brings to mind a children's song I used to have on a
little yellow (or was it red?) 78 rpm record (showing my age, I
know--it wasn't a 45):

January brings the snow,
February brings the rain,
March brings breezes that will blow
April showers once again.
May brings cherry blossoms, wine,
June brings tulips, roses sweet.
Hot July brings sunshine bright, 
August brings the corn and wheat. 
Warm September brings the sheaves, 
Bright October, fruit is here
Cold November swirling leaves, 
Then December, Christmas* cheer.

Not universal, maybe (for Northern latitudes, I mean), but close
enough (though I don't recall tulips in June; I think of them as
blooming in May). But it fits the traditional seasonal pattern as most
people (other than those in California, Florida, or Southern Arizona
experience them).

Carol, who thought that "sheaves" was "sheep" when she learned the
song around age five or six

*The song dates from the 1950s or earlier, long before political
correctness