Roots 'n' Shoots: Season Lore for the Southern Hemisphere

Why is RnS Moving to whiskerflowers.wordpress.com?

Google had brought out an algorithm update in May 2017. With previous updates like Panda or Penguin, Mr G had penalized blogs or websites with low quality content and those more focused on aggressive adverts (including multiple ads or pop-up ads in articles). However, many blogs/websites that weren't shady got penalized beyond recovery too and a lot of people lost their income. The May 2017 update has had wide-scale effect on blogs and websites, but without any explanation from Mr G as to why or what it does. RnS has been hit by it too and hard. RnS organic search stats (i.e. users from Google) have dropped by 75% since. Even though RnS is not a source of income, I tried to figure out why RnS is being culled. It seems that it doesn't really have anything to do with RnS per se, but likely because RnS is FREE and not paying for page ranking (via AdWords or Ad Ranking). Now it is likely being aggressively shoved to lower page rankings to accommodate the paid ads.

I cannot rely on Mr G anymore to get RnS' content where it is needed. So I am busy moving RnS to Wordpress where you can find me as Whisker Flowers @ https://whiskerflowers.wordpress.com/

I am also imposing 301 redirects from already moved posts and pages!

- The Shroom - (AKA Whisker Flowers)

Sunday 21 June 2015

Season Lore for the Southern Hemisphere

I thought as we are in the region of Winter Solstice this weekend I would provide some elaboration on the topic, especially for those of us in the Southern Hemisphere.

Ecological Seasons & Annual Rings

The Earth's seasons are created due to its rotation around the Sun (365.256363004 days) and its axial tilt of 23.4 degrees. As the Earth orbits the Sun, certain sides are more or less exposed to the Sun's rays, resulting in warmer and cooler periods on Earth. The Northern Hemisphere is inclined towards the sun for one half of the year and the Southern Hemisphere is inclined towards the sun for the other half. This is how our season are created and they are at opposites during the year with regards to the Northern and the Southern Hemispheres.

Summer Solstice in the different Hemispheres

Ancient civilisations across the world observed the seasonal phenomenon as well as the Sun's path through the Earth's sky and the day lengths associated with these. This lead to the division of the seasons according to day length and the sun's position in the sky. If you were to stand at the North Pole, you would notice that the Sun reaches its highest position in the sky during June, hence the Sun spends the longest amount of time in the sky during this time and the day lengths are the longest - thus it is Summer Solstice (or Estival Solstice) in the Northern Hemisphere. Whereas the opposite occurs in the South and the Southern Hemisphere experiences their longest nights, and so Winter Solstice (Hibernal Solstice). The Southern Hemisphere has Summer Solstice in December, when the Northern Hemisphere has Winter Solstice. The first day of Spring and Autumn are referred to as Equinoxes, where night and day lengths are equal, for Southerners Spring Equinox (Vernal Equinox) is in Spring and Autumn Equinox (Autumnal Equinox) is in March.

Earth's orbit around the sun and the division of the seasons.
Peroapsis is when the Earth is the closest to the Sun,
whereas Apoapsis is when the Earth is the farthest.

The arrival of Solstice and Equinoxes are celebrated by many cultures around the world. The most well known are likely those from the Pagan cultures. For example, Harvest Festivals are celebrated between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice such as Halloween or Samhain, when summer bounties are harvested and stored for winter months. Unfortunately many of the popularised dates are for the Northern Hemisphere, thus Southerners should be celebrating Harvest times around April-May...

Earth's axial tilt

For those interested here are the exact astronomical dates & times for the Solstices and Equinoxes for the Southern Hemisphere, Johannesburg, South Africa. You can generate similar tables for your region at timeanddate.com

Year
Autumn Equinox
Winter Solstice
Spring Equinox
Summer Solstice
2015
March 21, 00:46
June 21, 18:39
September 23, 10:22
December 22, 06:49
2016
March 20, 06:31
June 21, 00:35
September 22, 16:22
December 21, 12:45
2017
March 20, 12:30
June 21, 06:25
September 22, 22:03
December 21, 18:29
2018
March 20, 18:16
June 21, 12:08
September 23, 03:55
December 22, 00:24
2019
March 21, 00:00
June 21, 17:55
September 23, 09:51
December 22, 06:21
2020
March 20, 05:51
June 20, 23:45
September 22, 15:32
December 21, 12:03


______________________________________________________________________________

Please share with fellow gardening enthusiasts via the various sharing buttons at the end of posts/pages! Else you can vote for posts through the Google reactions bar at the end of articles. To stay up to date I have provided several reader and social networking platforms with which to subscribe: TwitterPinterestRSS Feed Reader or Email/Follow directly using the Blog Followers widget on the left hand side toolbar. Thank you for reading and please feel free to ask if questions arise - I appreciate comments and ideas too! ðŸ˜†
_________________________________________________________________________________

Absolutely Gorgeous Beautique

Absolutely Gorgeous Beautique
Your beauty, weight loss, slimming and skin care salon of choice! Products with International Shipping!