Of Ice and Hours: Folk Rhyme and Phyllis McGinley on the Seasons

November Folklore and the Gift of Time

If November’s ice is strong enough to hold a duck, English folk wisdom tells us, the rest of the winter will be marked not by harsh freeze but by "sludge and muck"—a thawed, muddy season ahead.

This bawdy rhyme, first printed around 1876, encapsulates a weather lore belief that an early hard freeze in November is a sign of a milder, wetter winter to follow.

It evokes the image of resilient waterfowl and the shifting cycles of frost and thaw that gardeners keenly observe as the year winds down.

Alongside this earthy wisdom, Phyllis McGinley’s delightful poem on Daylight Saving Time offers a gentle reflection on the invisible exchanges of time between seasons:

In spring when maple buds are red,
We turn the clock an hour ahead;
Which means each April that arrives,
We lose an hour out of our lives.

Who cares?

When autumn birds in flocks Fly southward,
back we turn the clocks,
And so regain a lovely thing
That missing hour we lost in spring.

This poetic observation reminds us that autumn gifts us a reprieve, a reclaiming of time as the clocks turn back, even as the natural world prepares for its winter rest.

For gardeners and nature lovers, these sayings together deepen our appreciation for the nuanced dance of seasons, where signs in ice and shifts in timekeeping mark nature’s endlessly renewing rhythm.

So as you prepare your garden for winter’s quiet, keep one eye on that November ice and another on the steady return of daylight—it is nature’s subtle way of whispering that while loss and dormancy arrive, renewal and light inevitably follow.