Spring Ahead

Daylight Saving Time will begin tomorrow Sunday March 11 at 3:00am.  The question is regularly asked why don't we just stay with one timezone? The Washington Posts tells us that we like having later sunsets in the summer, and wouldn't be happy if the sun went down at 7:00pm. Who first conceived of DST?  It was Benjamin Franklin in the 1770s.  Many countries went onto DST during World War I, following Germany's lead. Then in 1918, time zones and daylight saving were established.  It got repealed in 1919, but continued to be recognized. In Canada, DST was first observed in 1908, and has been observed for 106 years. Saskatchewan, some locations in Quebec, and some areas of British Columbia don't use DST.   It is up to the legislation of each municipality in Canada to decide the use of DST.  Can you imagine how complicated this is?  So there are towns/cities such as Dawson Creek and Fort Nelson that do not follow the provincial norm.   Swedish researchers say there may be some health benefits to turning your clock back. They studied 20 years of records and found that the number of heart attacks dipped on the Monday after clocks moved back an hour. Moving clocks ahead in the spring had the opposite effect. There were more heart attacks in the week after springing forward — especially during the first three days of the week. Another milestone towards Spring will be achieved.  We moved into Spring on March 1st according to the meteorological clock.   The Miltonia orchid I bought at the RBG orchid Show is almost ready to bloom.  I can see it will be red, like this one.   It is known as the Pansy Orchid, and is beautifully fragrant.