Other people are tiptoeing through their thawing gardens searching for signs of spring, peering under bushes, smoothing back soggy brown leaves from under gently budding branches, but that’s not us. We’re still slipping and sliding in a rapidly melting cover of white slimy stuff that seems to have coated every inch of brown lawn. Our weather people are still gleefully describe the weather as wicked, and bitter, and we don’t even live in the frigid part of Canada.
We judge spring’s immanent arrival by the cessation of the oncoming rumble of the snow plow. It’s loud grumble shaking windows, and tipping paintings on walls, red sparks flying 12 feet into the air from the contact of a metal blade on a dry road.
Up here we prepare for spring by watching for snow tire removal specials to show up in our local paper, and look for “remove chains to avoid fines” signs to be posted on the highways. That’s when we know it’s really spring.
Our first spring up here we were puzzled to see neighbours emerging onto what had been in the winter a deserted street, and raking piles of dark sandy gravel from their front yards. It was only when maintenance crews drove by picking up the gravel that we understood. The sand and gravel that is spread here is counted in the thousands of tons, per month… not like the coast where a truck load lasted all winter. And the accumulation on your lawn can run in the inches.
When the glass replacement companies start to offer chip repair, and windshield replacement times are booked solid, that means it’s almost spring. It is now safe to book the annual windshield replacement and hope that it lasts through the fall.
It’s a far cry from being one of the first to find the snowdrops in my secret place on the coast in January, gleefully emailing photos to every contact I could think of, smirking over the relative lack of snow in our previous climate. Don’t they say no good deed goes unpunished.
In response to my lamenting the lack of snow drops, my husband merely told me “there are lots of snow drops out there, a whole yard full of them falling from the sky. Just not the kind that I was looking for darling.
We know spring is coming when we start to get a early morning 4 am wake up call consisting of cawing, and screaming, as newly returned crows defend previous summer territories despite the foot of snow. Phil the pheasant is feeling frisky, flirting, trying to talk to the hens into a starring role on “ My 5 wives.” Our purchase of bird seed, and suet goes from two or three mega bags at a time to a more sedate ordinary sized bag once a week.
As the convocation [yes, a group of eagles is called a convocation] of eagles start to find food in places other then the rank smelling manure piles of deceased chickens from the commercial chicken farms down the road, we know that Bootsie, our cat can go outside unescorted. As long as someone keeps a eye out for bears, or raccoons in the backyard, or the newly emerging mosquitoes don’t carry him off.
When our pristine mountain water turns cloudy, and suddenly smells of chlorine, we know that it’s spring time, and the water turbidity has forced the township to revert to wells temporarily.
Big changes compared to where I used to live, would I move back, never. Yes my snowdrops come in liquid form now, but think how many I have… more then I would ever have if I still lived by the ocean.
My spring comes a little later, but it’s just as blissful.