Do Eggs Balance on the First Day of Spring?

There's a myth that eggs will stand on end during the Equinox.  Is it true?  Snopes says..

Photo of eggs found on Snopes

The Chinese are often cited as having originated the practice of standing eggs on end during the equinox. Just as the equinox symbolically restores balance to the world by signaling its rebirth after a season of darkness, the equinox literally balances the day by dividing it into equal portions of darkness and light. If the symbol of fertility, eggs, could be balanced on end during a day equally divided between day and night, this was a sign that all nature was in harmony

Nonetheless, the vernal equinox brings no special egg-balancing properties with it. Standing an egg on its end is something just about anyone can do any day of the year; the feat simply takes the right egg and a little trial and practice. Since the vast majority of people never see or try balancing eggs on their ends on any day other than the equinox, though, many of them come away from the experience believing that something special must have occurred on that particular day.

More HERE on Snopes. 

Spring 2019 Comes Today, Wednesday, March 20! Flower Dreaming...

Happy Spring!

It's still cold out there and the furnace is still purring here in Chicago, but Spring is literally just around the corner.  The Northern Hemisphere enters Spring for 2019 tomorrow, Wednesday, March 20th, at 4:58 p.m. Central Daylight Time (5:58 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time).

The vernal equinox (autumnal equinox in the Southern Hemisphere) means that the days and nights are just about equal all over the world.  The word "equinox" comes from Latin words meaning "equal night".

So, as we in the Northern Hemisphere wait, here are a few beautiful still life studies of Spring flowers by Russian painter Sergey Potapov with which to welcome and ponder Spring 2019:

Still Life by Sergey Potapov (Russian)

Still Life by Sergey Potapov (Russian)

Still Life by Sergey Potapov (Russian)

(I found these paintings on Facebook, introduced HERE by Facebook user Samuel Cherubin via Art-katalog.com.)

It's World Book Day, March 7: For the Love of Books

Why We Read: 

Books are magic. They can take you anywhere you want to go.  They take you to different times; they let you visit people who lived hundreds of years earlier; they let you imagine what it would be like to live hundreds of years later.  You can be rich or you can be poor; you can experience anything through a book.

(A friend posted this illustration on Facebook . If I can find the source, I will credit it.) 

In honor of World Book Day, at least World Book Day in the UK, I'm going to reintroduce an article I wrote last year about the joy and magic of books:

At one time we had hundreds of books, actually we had several thousand books.  My first husband and I were both book collectors; our first date included a trip to a used book store with thousands of cheap books.  My ex-husband built bookshelves everywhere...  We had library stacks in the basement, library stacks in the extra rooms on the third floor; the closets that we didn't need for clothing or storage were turned into floor-to-ceiling book shelves. 

But then life changed..... 

The story continues here:

 For the Love of Books.......

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Book_Day_(UK_and_Ireland)