Time to set your clocks: Habitat Saving Time

 On Saturday night, most folks will set their clocks back one hour to standard time; I hope to        freeze time with the help of early morning cold temperatures. 

I will get up on Sunday morning earlier than I have been lately thanks to moving the clock back one hour on Saturday night, however, I plan on gaining much more than an hour in my day. Sun and temperature are my final time arbitrator.

The Sunday morning frosted vegetation will hold for me, qualities of artistic sparkling designs until the sun once again releases the clock hands and melts the stillness of flash-frozen fever time. Only nature can determine how much time I gain. 

Vegetation in nature creates patterns in the visual structures of living things through the biological processes of natural selection and sexual selection. Beyond evolutionary species changes, individual plants change seasonally, even daily, and like us, they start small, new, fresh, then they mature, become and look old, and die. But also like us, they often retain beauty in all of their life cycle. The benefit of a frost is that it highlights plant patterns and designs beyond the time when their flowers are long since faded or fallen off. 

For a brief time, their unique patterns are on display and highlighted in crystals of ice. 

Ripples of time frozen in place.

That will be my chance to step into a time warp, a holding pattern, a world where time holds in place allowing me to view otherwise ever-changing life forms encapsulated and on dazzling display in a crystallized resin. 

Bringing my camera will help me to focus and observe more intently seeing that which I might otherwise not fully appreciate. As Brandon Stanton noted, "The Camera adds a certain sheen to things. Something about being frozen in time really makes things sparkle." 

Along with geometric patterns, are the progeny of plants - seeds. Some of those seeds need cold stratification, others I suppose simply try to endure the cold, and bide their time hoping that squirrels, chipmunks, mice, and other critters will overlook them so that they can grow when spring arrives. 

When I come upon seeds with freezer burn, I wonder if critters pass them up like we sometimes pass on freezer-burned foods in our refrigerator. 

The extra hour on our clocks on Monday will not fool the trees. They know there are fewer daylight hours now through the winter solstice and will drop their leaves accordingly. 

With nature's help we can hold time hostage, albeit for short intervals, and lock in on her diverse wonders throughout the seasons; perhaps we might call it habitat saving time. 

  

Will you save time for nature? What in nature will you observe, and enjoy with your extra time?

Poem by Welsh poet W.H.Davies

What is life if full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep and cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass. 

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

- Leisure”

Mom, will I be big and tall like you when I grow up?

It is time we made our Greenbelts green!

Visit nature, perhaps bring a camera if you like, 

 but forget the clock, daylight saving time or not. 

Comment from Claire: Thank you Bernie for the beauty you share with us all. You have helped me see what is not noticed often and for that I am most grateful. My awareness of what is in our backyard is so much more now and always.

Again, thank you and stay safe.

Claire