Citations:dogwood winter


 * 1917, Kentucky Medical Journal, page 358:
 * It is dogwood winter, blackberry winter, and linen breeches winter and the Lord only knows just when we can sing “It was in the month of May when the lambs did skip and play, etc.”
 * 1920, Daniel Lindsey Thomas, Lucy Blayney Thomas, Kentucky Superstitions, page 190:
 * 2449. If it thunders in December, there will be cold weather.
 * 2450. A green (warm ) Christmas makes a fat graveyard.
 * 2451. A white (snowy) Christmas means a lean graveyard.
 * 2452. If it sleets between the Christmases (old and new), there will be a good mast year
 * 2453. The number of fogs in summer indicates the number of snows in winter.
 * 2454. If you stick an axe into a tree during "dogwood winter" (see 2433), the tree will die.
 * 2455. If it rains on Sunday, there will be only ...
 * 1971, Elizabeth Lawrence, Lob's Wood:
 * And again, "We are having dogwood winter. The danger of frost is not over until the middle of May, and they are predicting it for tonight, but I hope they are going to be wrong, for my standard wisterias should be a sight to behold in another day or two. The wild flowers are still gay, but the daffodils, except for the poets, are about over." Another year on the last day of April he wrote again of dogwood winter: "The dogwoods are going to be at their very best this year; they are just coming ..."
 * 1990, Linda Piepenbrink, A Year in the country (ISBN 9780898210927):
 * During "dogwood winter" it didn't snow, but the mercury dropped to the lower teens for a week. I had still more to learn about Appalachian weather a week or so later. "Blackberry winter" was the real shocker. One day I was out savoring sunshine and listening to the bees humming contentedly in the blackberry blossoms. The next day I was huddled close to the fire while sleet banged against the windowpanes. The following morning dawned clear and warm, as though yesterday's cold ...
 * 1996, Michael Bigelow Dixon, Michele Volansky, Actors Theatre of Louisville, By Southern playwrights: plays from Actors Theatre of Louisville:
 * OLD FARMER: I sold right at a good time. I was 72 years old when I quit.
 * OLD FARM WOMAN: This must be dogwood winter. There's a bunch of winters they've named. Dogwood, blackberry, witch's winter, they've got a lot of them but dogwoods are in bloom. I've got about four trees in the yard. They call it dogwood winter because the dogwoods are in bloom and it's cold.
 * 2006, Annie Jones, April in Bloom, Harlequin Books (ISBN 9780373812578):
 * "Dogwood winter," she finished, pushing away from him at last. "Huh?" "A cold snap after the dogwoods have begun to bloom. They used to call it a dogwood winter." That was how she would forever think of this night between them. The cold that came after love had begun to bloom. "Not a killing frost but harsh enough to alter the bud, to take the color out of the blossom for a season or — " He gave her no warning. Just pulled her close and placed his lips on hers. Passion? She did not ...
 * 2013, Debra Webb, Ready, Aim...I Do!: Missing, Harlequin (ISBN 9781460320235), page 282:
 * needed to ask. “The windows are open,” he said to William. “Were they open that night?” William shook his head. “That night it was cold for May. One of those dogwood winters the old timers talk about.” “May I see her room?” Jonathan couldn't name what he was looking for but he needed to get a feel for the family life. He'd formed a pretty strong opinion already and it wasn't good. With William away serving his country most of the time, it didn't appear that anyone was watching after the ...

mention-y but clarifying meaning and listing synonyms

 * 1911, The Century Dictionary: The Century dictionary, page 7141:
 * Dogwood winter. See the extract. Dogwood winter.—A man from North Carolina, who was visiting in Philadelphia, in the course of conversation used the expression dogwood winter. “What do you mean by dogwood winter?” asked his host., “Don't you really know what dogwood winter is?" demanded the man from Hickory, N. C. “There is always a spell of it in May, when the dogwood tree is in bloom. For several days there is cold, disagreeable, cloudy weather and often a touch of frost ..."
 * 1915, The American Journal of Clinical Medicine, page 567:
 * I say beautiful, for, in view of my open window is the forest with a lily-white petticoat made of the flowering undergrowth of the now blooming dogwood; and we are at present going through a cold snap that we call “dogwood winter," a cold spell that in this region invariably occurs in the blooming season of this shrub. Doctor Howard, in the book named, describes dogwood as being tonic, astringent, antiseptic (a word I thought we of today had a copyright on), and stimulant; ...
 * 1937, Louise Pound, Kemp Malone, Arthur Garfield Kennedy, William Cabell Greet, American Speech:
 * This name for a belated spell of winter coming in the late spring belongs with Missouri's 'blackberry winter' and 'snow-ball winter,' North Carolina's dogwood winter,' Canada's 'squaw winter,' and Nebraska's 'Indian winter.'
 * 1938, Waldo Lee McAtee, Collected Reprints, 1905-1957:
 * In the eastern Kentucky mountains, an unseasonable cold spell occurs often enough at the time when the flowering dogwood is blooming to have received the name dogwood winter. The scarlet tanager, migrating and thus being seen most frequently at about the same period, is accordingly termed dogwood-winter bird. When men are in the harvest fields they see birds unnoticed at other times and have named a few of them from the season, as harvest bird (grasshopper sparrow and ...
 * 1974, Foxfire:
 * This is called dogwood winter. A little later, when it is almost time for summer to be ushered in, there is another cold snap, called blackberry winter. This occurs when the blackberry briars are in bloom. Several Pigeon Roost residents have returned to ramp patches, where a ramp party was held and ramps gathered to bring home to use and to divide among friends. The nearest ramp patches are situated at Hughes Cap, about 18 miles from Pigeon Roost, and on Unaka Mountain near ...
 * 1982, Redbook: The Magazine for Young Adults:
 * Mama says the cold spell is gooseberry winter but Dad insists it is dogwood winter. "Well, we saw a gooseberry bush in full bloom today, so I know good and well it's gooseberry winter," Mama says. "But the dogwood on the creek just bloomed," says Dad. "It's dogwood winter." "It's gooseberry winter," says Mama. THE END
 * Bobbie Ann Mason's collection of short stories, "Shiloh and Other Stories," will be published this month by Harper & Row. This is the third of her stories to appear in ...
 * 1992, Joseph R. Millichap, Robert Penn Warren: a study of the short fiction:
 * These unseasonal cold spells provide a mirror image of "Indian Summer" and likewise have a sequence of folk names derived from the blossoms scattered by these northern fronts: daffodil winter in April, dogwood winter in May, blackberry winter in June when the blackberry bushes are white with their delicate blossoms . Warren opens his story with blackberry winter in the recollection of a narrator named Seth, then nine years old, circa 1910, in the border country of Tennessee.