Happy Spring Day!

Spring is here!

My favourite time of the year. It feels like the whole country is smiling and every person is shaking off the winter-dust collected during this last period of hibernation… You can see and smell it at every corner at the moment… we are all coming back to life…

Astronomically, the change from winter into spring is called Vernal Equinox and takes place on 22nd or 23 September each year (in the southern hemisphere; in the northern hemisphere this is of course the start of autumn and is called the autumnal equinox). Vernal Equinox is of course a direct derivative of Latin, with “ver” meaning “spring” and “equinox” referring to a point in time when the length of the day and the night are equal. It means that there will be 12 hours or daylight and 12 hours of night time. The reason for this is that the sun is positioned directly above the equator!

The instances of the equinoxes are not fixed, but fall about six hours later every year, amounting to one full day in four years. They are reset by the occurrence of a leap year (read more about this in the article on Wikipedia).

In Annapolis, Maryland in the United States, boatyard employees and sailboat owners celebrate the spring equinox with their “Burning of Socks” Festival. Traditionally, the boating community wears socks only during winter. These are burned at the approach of warmer weather. Officially, nobody wears socks until the next equinox. I like this… we should introduce this festival here!!!

There is a myth that, at the equinox, it is possible to balance a raw egg on its end… well, why don’t you try and give me feedback!