It's hard to believe we've yet another nasty snow storm approaching. It's supposed to arrive Sunday morning, along with daylight saving time. Somebody should tell Mother Nature it's supposed to be spring when we push the clocks ahead! But I think it's supposed to be over with and out of here pretty quickly, so perhaps it won't do too much damage. Goodness knows, we don't need more snow, power outages, wind and misery.
     Here's something that will make you think about spring - and summer gardening, planting crops - all that sort of thing. And

hopefully some folks will rethink the fertilizers and other chemicals they use around their homes. I apologize for the quality of the print. For some reason it didn't come out very well, but it's the best I could do. Click on it and I think you will be able to make it out ok. Thanks to Kate Chatot for sending it to me.
     I have another sign of spring for you, especially meaningful to Joe's Pond Association members. It's almost time for the spring newsletter to be published. Joanne Stewart is pulling it together this year. She has asked me to post that she's looking for news items. She's interested in hearing about weddings, new babies, accolades, achievements, trips, upcoming events this summer, or just about any message fit to print. It would be great to have a photo with whatever you send her, too. Keep it as brief as possible as space is always a factor. Please send it to her at verthai@gmail.com. Your contribution will make her very happy.
     So if the day seems somehow out of whack for you tomorrow, perhaps it's because you forgot to set your clocks ahead. It's annoying when everyone else is an hour ahead of you. It's bound to take a day or two to adjust - almost everyone complains about that. Of course, if you live in Arizona, Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and U. S. Virgin Islands, you'll be out of sync with the rest of us until next fall anyway. It's strange, but the Navajo Indians in Arizona do change to Daylight Savings Time (DST). Did you know Ben Franklin was the first to come up with this "bright" idea. He suggested that getting up earlier in the morning and thus going to bed earlier at night would save candles. He was a smart cookie.
     Then, in WWI, Germany began using DST to save fuel in 1916. The trend spread throughout Europe, but United States didn't adopt the plan until the spring of 1918. After the war was over, congress went back to Standard time. For a while, DST was adopted by some states while others did not. Then in WWII, President Franklin Roosevelt called it "War Time" and declared it in effect year around. It lasted from February 9, 1942 to the September 30, 1945. After that it was optional by states but it had to be state-wide, whatever they decided. Previously there were zones and some parts of some states were on different time. Confusion resulted. There were experiments from time to time, studies done, the dates the change-over occurred juggled, and finally, in 2014 the law was enforced across the country, with a couple of exceptions. For a state like Alaska, changing the clocks really wouldn't make much sense. They have daylight almost around-the-clock in the summer. And Arizona is so hot in the summer that conducting business an extra hour in metropolitan areas would expend excessive energy because of running cooling systems longer. 
    On the other hand, California maintains DST year-round; Florida is on the fence about it, but a bill is pending in congress to allow permanent DST there, as well. Hawaii's daylight hours do not fluctuate enough to warrant changing the time.
     So there it is - all you didn't need to know about DST. You can read the whole thing on wikipedia.org. I've condensed it here, but it will give you a sense of the hows and whys. I guess it really does make sense - although I've always thought it would work ok to just stay on DST and save all the bother.
    I am not going to try to figure out the last bit of information on the site about how computers are programmed to adapt to time changes. Waaay too complicated for me. I get confused about what day it is sometimes. Nope, Java, perl and shell languages mean nothing to me, and that's ok. Fred knows about that stuff and can get me out of trouble when necessary - I do not have to understand it.
     Be safe if you're in any of the storm zones tomorrow. Maybe THIS will be our last storm of the Winter of 2019 . . . ?