Time is a funny thing; it isn't at all consistent. As I get older (and reading Gordon sometimes makes me feel very old), it seems to run both faster and slower, the way it does when you are running a high fever. Winters are getting longer, even as the entire year passes far more quickly. There is a logical explanation. With every year lived added to my lifespan thus far, each individual year becomes a smaller and smaller proportion of the whole. As for the added length of winter, the physical discomfort of the season has become more pronounced on my body. I get cold far more easily than I once did, and it takes longer (and more effort) to get warm again. I ache more easily. I yearn physically for spring and sun and warmth.
This, I suspect, is where the seasonal holidays got their start. Not from the agricultural year; the time grid of farming was a more modern reason for what humans were already doing. Just as the holidays of many current religions happen to coincide with the days when humans were already celebrating or observing.
I love my gardens. I nurture them, and they nurture me (although sometimes the deer and the groundhogs end up with far more of the actual nutrition then I do.) I celebrate the coming of Spring and the return of warmth, not because I can't wait to break my back grubbing weeds (I HATE the feel of dirt under my fingernails, and let us not talk about what the work can do to a manicure), but because it is the return of life and fresh growth, green, and warmth.
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