Bad Winter Coming?

Is it an Old Wives' Tale or a Countryman's Prediction? Lots of berries this late Summer — does this really mean that we'll have a very hard winter?

It's one of my favourite trees, and has been since my earliest mountaineering days back in the Fifties. Sometimes I prefer the name 'Mountain Ash' from the thoughts and memories recalling the many mountains I can no longer climb, but it's only the resemblance of the leaves to the real Ash that produced this name. Most of the derivations come from 'red' for the berries or brown as seeing reddish brown. The German gives us 'Vogelbeerbaum', bird-berry tree, but our Scottish/English is likely from an Old Norse verb referring to the reddening of the berries. This year our own Rowan tree's berries started off a dull, then brighter yellow, on through orange, but are now a very clear and lovely red. 'Running the Gamut', perhaps.