February Miscellany

To my mind there is something modest about February, not a month given to ostentatious display of any kind. It is shorter and therefore of lesser stature than other months. February is less cold and dark and forbidding than January and often milder than March in these parts. There are tentative signs of Spring, but these will easily be nipped in the bud by icy March winds. February is a wait-and-see month, even Carnival and Lent don't have their own firmly established place in the order of things, instead they depend on he good graces of Easter.

Still, even in-between months have their good points, there are crocuses, hellebores and the first unforced shoots of rhubarb in the garden.

Crocuses after rain

an almost black hellebore bud opening

the first rhubarb leaf unfurling

In February the Sun enters the House of Pisces.  The 'Kalendar of Shepheardes' of 1604 has this to say about Pisceans:

The man born under Pisces shall be a great goer, a fornicator, a mocker and covetous; he will say one thing and do another. He shall trust in his sapience, he shall have good fortune; he will be a defender of widows and orphans. He shall be fearful on water; he shall soon pass all adversities and live seventy-two years after nature.

The woman shall be delicious, familiar in jests, pleasant of courage, fervent, a great drinker. She shall have sickness of her eyes and be sorrowful by shame, needlessly. Her husband will leave her, and she shall have much trouble with strangers. She shall travel much, have pain in her stomach, and live seventy-seven years.

Both man and woman shall live faithfully.

Don't say you weren't warned!