The dark bare limbs with a pink backdrop from a sunrise or sunset adds color during winter days.
Winter Pink
Some people and some things are greedy and old man winter is one of them as he steals most of autumn and part of spring. He doesn’t look at the calendar and see he is only supposed to have three months and especially not this winter since it snowed a week and a half after autumn started. Autumn should holler and stomp its feet but instead it quietly slips away after a brief appearance and the evidence of its passing soon becomes buried under the snow.
Robbed of Autumn
One hobby I had as a kid was collecting stamps and at the time, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to what was on the stamps but more on which stamps I was missing. A few had more meaning to me, places I had seen like Devils Tower, youth groups I was in like FFA and 4-H, the stamps dealing with Wisconsin and the six cent sheep stamp.
Mixed in the three cents stamp is one honoring the four chaplains who gave comfort and gave up their life jackets when the United States Army Transport Dorchester sank after being hit by torpedo on February 3, 1943. The four Army chaplains brought hope in despair and light in darkness and as the ship went down, survivors in nearby rafts could see the four chaplains–arms linked and braced against the slanting deck when more than 670 men died.
Traditionally, the first Sunday in February is Four Chaplains Sunday and the local American Legion veterans rotate between the area churches to honor what the long forgotten three cent stamp found in my collection called “these immortal chaplains”.
These Immortal Chaplains
More information on the Four Chaplains click on this link
Click here for a video on the the Four Chaplains
Groundhog Day is a holiday celebrated on February 2 in the United States and Canada. According to folklore, if it is cloudy when a groundhog emerges from its burrow on this day then spring will come early. If it is sunny, the groundhog will supposedly see its shadow and retreat back into its burrow, and the winter weather will continue for six more weeks.
The groundhog, also known as a woodchuck, or whistle-pig, is a rodent of the family Sciuridae, belonging to the group of large ground squirrels. If any rodent ventured out on this cold morning, the groundhog, or even a ground squirrel like pictured, would have seen its shadow so a long winter ahead.
Rodent Saw Its Shadow