Reflections on the Seventh Week of Winter – A Discombobulated Groundhog Day

    Thursday morning, February 2, I gobbled potato pancakes and waited for the sun to rise over Wells Wood. WESA radio in Pittsburgh announced they’d report on Punxsutawney Phil in ten minutes. Why wait? With a few taps on the Nexus screen, a news article appeared. The famous Pennsylvania groundhog had seen his shadow and predicted six more weeks of winter.

    Seven inches of snow blanketed Wells Wood and lumpy clouds covered every inch of the sky. Only deer and squirrel tracks crisscrossed the woods when Spence and I took an investigating walk during the sunny afternoon. As our friend Joyce in England had predicted, Wells Wood groundhogs hid in their burrows all day. None of our groundhogs saw a shadow in its burrow that cloudy morning.

    Did Groundhog Day predictions even count this year when groundhogs had left their burrows earlier?

    January 18, a week after the torrential rains (See January 15 blog), I drove home from a quilt guild meeting. Clouds blocked the moon and stars making the country night blindfold dark. But the car’s bright beams lit a dozen yards and highlighted the slushy mud rains had made of the back roads. When I drove out of the mud, up a grade, and onto the metal bridge spanning roaring Deer Creek, an animal scooted two feet ahead of the car in my lane. I slowed down and crept behind the brown critter. Its broad, pumpkin-shaped posterior hid its head, but the furry tail belonged to a groundhog.

    Groundhog? On a January night?

    Groundhogs hibernate in winter. They don’t leave their burrows in January.

    Groundhogs are diurnal. They don’t come out at night.

    Discombobulated, I doubted my eyes.

    The next morning under cloudy skies, Spence called me from his truck on County Line Road. “You really did see a groundhog last night,” he said. “I just passed a groundhog looking down at me from a rise at the edge of the road.”

    Flooding must have chased discombobulated groundhogs out of their burrows.

    The night groundhog definitely saw its shadow in the bright headlights.

    Spence’s morning groundhog didn’t see a shadow under cloudy skies.

    Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow – from camera lights if not the sun.

    Wells Wood groundhogs didn’t see shadows under morning clouds and hidden in their burrows on February 2.

    Could anyone make a plausible weather prediction from the conflicting data?

    Regardless, Phil could determine something. He’d decide which fabrics I bought to make napkins for the log cabin place mats I’d sewn last year.

    Fox’s, a quilting store in Meadville, offered a 22% sale on fabrics matching Punxsutawney Phil’s 2/2 prediction. The discount applied to “lightly, brightly colored fabrics” if

Phil saw his shadow. The discount applied to “deeply, darkly colored fabrics” if Phil didn’t.

    I entered the store ready to choose “ lightly, brightly.”

    The owner met me near the counter and said that any fabric would be considered light and bright if I could find a darker fabric in the store. “And we have black fabric,” she added with a wink.

    Shadow. No shadow. Lightly brightly. Deeply darkly.

    After a discombobulating Groundhog Day, I’ll do what I always do. Slip into my boots, zip up my coat, and pull on my stocking cap till spring arrives.