I woke up early on Saturday and let the dogs out into the yard. There in my garden, like beautiful, hopeful rays of sunshine, was a small group of daffodils reaching for the sky.

It makes me happy and glad that I had planted them.

The gorgeous yellow Narcissus comes up first to remind us that we have survived another year of storms, snow and wind, rain and bitter cold and here in the Northwest, the outside temps have become reasonable.

Local car washes are packed with good people who can no longer tolerate their grimy cars. Department stores are already switching out heaters and snow shovels for patio chairs and deck umbrellas.

With rain-laden clouds beginning to break up in the sky, like groundhogs, we are emerging from our caves to see what's left of the world.

This year, in Punxsutawney, PA, our official, national groundhog Phil, did not see his shadow and said we will have an early spring.

Here's his official proclamation poem, delivered with much decorum by one of Phil's longcoat and top-hat wearing handlers:

"El Nino has caused high winds, heavy snow, ice and freezing temperatures in the west.

Here in the East with much mild winter weather we have been blessed.

Global warming has caused a great debate.

This mild winter makes it seem just great.

On this Groundhog Day we think of one thing.

Will we have winter or will we have spring?

On Gobbler's Knob I see no shadow today.

I predict that early spring is on the way."

Phil the Groundhog is at least as reliable as our local weathermen. And though, if you took his glasses off, Andy Wappler might look like a bit like a distant cousin to Phil, at least Phil doesn't tease us every morning with false promises.

It seems natural for people (and even groundhogs) to pop their heads out the window and wax eloquent. It's been going on for centuries. Sailors cannot board ship without hearing, at least once:

"Red sky at morning/sailor's warning

Red sky at night/sailor's delight"

With the sun shining up at the undersides of clouds in the mornings and evenings, the low angle seeks out mostly the red part of the color spectrum. If the morning sky is red, it is likely that clear skies to the east will permit the sun to light the undersides of clouds bearing moisture, coming in from the west. In order to see red clouds in the evening, sunlight must have a clear path from the west in order to illuminate moisture-bearing clouds moving off to the east, thereby forecasting clear weather.

Bill Shakespeare picked up on this phenomenon in a play called "Venus and Adonis":

"Like a red morn that ever yet betokened,

Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field,

Sorrow to the shepherds, woe unto the birds,

Gusts and foul flaws to herdman and to heads.'

The good work of sailors and Shakespeare notwithstanding, farmers have always had to suss out the ways of the weather to survive as well, creating little verses to aid the memory:

"When windows won't open and salt clogs the shaker/The weather will favor the umbrella maker."

Also moisture-related: "Rain before seven/clear by eleven." indicates a spring-like, passing weather front.

Less obvious but more promising, there is this one: "When March decides to blow it's horn, your barn will be filled with hay and corn." The "horn" refers to thunderstorms.

I ride the weather people pretty hard, but with our proximity to the ocean, the often frigid Frazer River Valley and the immediacy of two mountain ranges on our flanks this region is not the easiest to forecast.

I usually fall back on the old saw that my pal, Crazy Jack invokes the silly mnemonic:

"Whether the weather be fine, or whether the weather be not

Whether the weather be cold, or whether the weather be hot

We'll whether the weather, whatever the weather

Whether we like it or not."

And when all else fails, there is the lamentable, "Ode to The Weatherman":

And in the dying embers

These are my main regrets:

When I'm right, no one remembers;

When I'm wrong, no one forgets.