SIGNS OF SPRING

As I drove to church on March 1st doing my best to navigate through zero visibility as March’s lion roared the first blizzard of the winter into my face, I thought to myself “And here we are!  Canadian spring, in all its unpredictability, has arrived!”

As if I needed further proof, when I arrived at church there were the first two sun-browned faces of recently returned snowbirds to reinforce my ‘spring has sprung’ notion.

Even though this winter hasn’t been too harsh for us prairie dwellers this time around, we are always ready to turn the page into spring by this time.  Technically spring doesn’t get here until the spring equinox on March 21^st but there are a lot of us rebels who look to the beginning of this month with a hunger to speed things up.  The minute that February tips into March we are ready to declare the arrival of this sweet season.  Leap year made us wait that extra day this time around, but we are finally here!

Not that I sat around and just patiently waited.  I’ve spent the past month grasping at straws.

There’s nothing like having enough light in the morning to be able to find the coffee pot without turning on the lights.  Likewise, being able to still see the coyote the dog is barking at till well after supper is reassuring.  The days are lengthening out.  I have long suspected that I am solar powered so this does my batteries all kinds of good.  There have even been a few days that were warm enough to sit out on the deck and just soak up some sun.  I dream of flowers and hummingbirds.  We’ve barbequed twice in the last couple of weeks.

Even on the days that are too cold to actually go outside the sun is strong enough to heat up my greenhouse.  Not that I have anything growing out there yet, but when the sun gets high enough in the sky my remote thermometer shows me that it’s in the high 20s or low 30s out there.  There have been a few days that I have gone out to bask in the warmth, taking in deep breaths of soil and summer.  It’s the tonic that kept me going through February.

I’ve had conversations about fresh asparagus and the potential strawberry crop this year.  I have my vegetable seeds all ready to go and keep finding more flowers I want to start now that we are actually within a sensible greenhouse timeframe.  I may still need to be sedated or have an intervention to keep things real; Spring Fever is a dangerous thing.

The sign of spring that most impresses my dog is that I have begun venturing out on walks again.  He, with his Husky fur coat and four feet on the ground, just can’t understand why my exercise program goes into hibernation once the roads get icy and the temperatures bottom out.  Now that conditions are more human friendly we have clocked almost 20 miles over the last two weeks.  He’s not sure what the difference is but I am watched like a hawk so he doesn’t miss out.  Even now he is laid out right behind my chair.  There is no way I can leave this room without him knowing.

But, there are lots of other signs out there – on one of our walks a flock of Canada Geese flew over heading north, farmers are out touring the back roads because they have ‘the itch’ too, and baby calves are being born.  I’ve even spotted another set of brown-faced snowbirds!

If all goes along the usual track of spring on the Canadian prairies there will be another couple of late blizzards and then we can lay this winter to rest!