Looking forward

I began taking the Christmas decorations down today - not because it's Twelfth Night, if I just caused you to experience a sudden panic, but because we're hosting the Boy Wonder at the weekend, and I want the house restored to normal order before then. Personally, not being the least bit superstitious, I take no notice whatever of Twelfth Night, and simply take down our decorations when I'm bored with them: one year they barely made it through Boxing Day, but usually they manage to hang on more or less into the New Year. This year we had a splendid Christmas, and I'm sorry to see them go - but needs must.

While contemplating all the glitz and bling, and making a mental schedule of the order in which I proposed removing it, my eye fell on this dragonfly, which I bought a few years ago and of which I'm very fond, despite its anatomical deficiencies. My mind immediately leapt forward four months, to the beginning of the Odonata season, and while I don't believe in wishing one's life away - at my age, I can't afford to - the thought of warmer, brighter weather, and longer days hunting and photographing invertebrates, brought a happy smile to my face. I noticed yesterday that the birds in the garden are already singing in anticipation of the breeding season, and experience says that within the next two months the first solitary bees will begin to emerge, and various tiny overwinterers will start to come out of hibernation.

A fun fact to continue this cheerful theme (though with the caveat that different apps and web sites do give slightly different figures) is that as of tomorrow, Northern Hemisphere days will be drawing out in both directions. Here in the Shire our earliest sunset was at 15.55pm, between the 10th and 15th of December, since when it's been getting slowly later; today (had one been able to see any sun on this thoroughly gloomy day) it took place at 16.08. The latest sunrise here was at 08.16am, which has been the stated time from 27th December until today. Tomorrow though, it will be at 08.15. Yay!

And here's one other bonus fact, which I think is quite fun and I hope you might like too: I was searching various dictionaries a little while ago for an antonym for 'superstitious', and though I couldn't find a word that seemed completely appropriate, I came across 'mimifidian' - which as an adjective means 'having, or expressing doubt', and as a noun means 'a person inclined to question or doubt accepted opinions'. I think it's a word that sums me up pretty well, and I'd like to claim it as my own. Though in all likelihood I'll have forgotten it by Friday.