dogberries

reesetee But why did the worms cross the road? Dec 10, 2007

chained_bear Ted Burke on the Weather:
Out on the water, you'll always have a work up sky before you gets a storm. Real old dark clouds is on the sky—and perhaps if you're going to get a northeast wind, you'll see it way up over the islands. The old fellows, you know, they were pretty keen. The year the dogberries is plenty, it's going to be a mild winter. Now, I'm after hearing several different yarns about that. We were in Seldom one time with the mail. And the fellow that runs the Post Office, he had a garden. Full of dogberries—so that was in December—and the dogberries was just like grapes on the tree then. So I said to the old man there, "What's that a sign of?" And he said, "Boy, that's the sign of a mild winter." And so it was. But anyways, I'm after hearing people saying, "When the dogberries stands on the trees, there's going to be lots of snow"—since the birds can pick off the dogberries off the trees. Same way in the fall of the year. If you sees the worms crossing the roads, it's going to be a mild winter. Say tomorrow, if the wind was southern, we'd all know if we're going to get rain. You'd know by the feel of the wind, you see. Wind would be right soft.
--quoted in Robert Mellin, Tilting: House Launching, Slide Hauling, Potato Trenching, and Other Tales from a Newfoundland Fishing Village, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003. Dec 9, 2007