wheres the spring gone

Here, here Danno. Bit of cabin fever setting in. No doubt in a few months time we will be sweltering .... hopefully.

yes,we're having a lot of weather here at the moment...in the usual pessimistic forecast of the bread lady's mother she assures me because it was bad on the day of some particular saint (whose name i've forgotton)we will now have another forty days and nights of bad weather taking in most of April with a bad easter too.whilst more authorative weather people are talking of a very hot torrid summer...so we'll go probably from winter to summer...again.

Your bread ladys mum is pretty typical. We have the farmers near me, who you would think might come to weather conclusions based on experience & observations. But, like you say they normally prefer to rely on some rather bizarre sayings. Like snow on march 1st, will mean floods till summer (actually I made that one up, cos I could not remember any of theirs)

the bread lady's mum and saints apart...we musn't forget the calendar which is still winter until the end of this week 21st march when the spring equinox starts...sometimes...over the last few years it's been notable how really warm weather in south western marche (over 40km from the coast) doesn't seem to really get going until the begining of MAY! whilst anything to be described as vaguely hot not until the snow finally leaves the mountains which,if there's a lot,doesn't happen until some time in june...by which time you'll be staring at the wood pile and wondering about next winter's wood supply ....just to be optimistic you understand

Wrong saint! That is St Médard, a French saint whose festivity is in June. According to customs, if it rains on his day, it will keep on raining for 40 days..... That's what they say. Now, the patron saint to pray against cold weather is Saint Maurus, an Italian Benedictine monk born in Rome in 512 of a patrician family. He is the one who protects against the cold weather... so he may be more helpful, being Italian... Only problem, taking into account the EU, it may be a good idea to pray to both saints.... There is also a German saint, St Sebaldus. Perhaps the three of them could get together!

thanks for the amusing & educational info on who to pray to.

What's happened to poor old Saint Swithin, whoever he may have been. I hope he may be allowed into the conversation with these other upstarts!

Seem to remember we had similar weather in 2004 March. We were driving back to the UK for a visit and most of Europe and UK were in the same situation!!

Saint Swithun is very effective in case of a drought. You pray to him if what you want is a good shower. Keeping in mind what regularly happens in the UK, he is a very busy saint! I thought that we were praying for fair weather. In the case of electrical storms, Saint Barbara should be invoked for protection... Possibly they are having some fun together.