WHEN IT’S SPRINGTIME IN Saskatchewan

Here we are at the first of June, still technically spring but feeling a whole lot more like summer. 

My ancestors came from the misty cool highlands of Scotland, I am genetically unequipped to deal with summer on the Canadian Prairies but here I am anyway – already sporting sunburned arms and a peeling nose.  I have two natural colorings in the summer – either the pasty white of mushroom soup, or the vibrant red of Campbell’s tomato.  I do manage to develop something that looks like ‘tan’ but only when compared to other of my body parts that never see the sun at all.  There was a time in history that women were supposed to have milky white skin.  I hope my forebears made the most of it.

My reluctance to participate in the heat and glaring sun of summer is overridden by my desire to have a garden and enjoy my yard, though.  After spending winter longing for green and warmth I’m as anxious as any farmer to get outside and start things growing.  I don’t even wait in fact, I plant seeds in the house about mid March so I can see them either grow spindly and weak or just keel over and die depending on their individual descretion.  Some actually make it to the garden, usually just in time for the last frost, but the effort keeps me busy and my livingroom looking like a mini greenhouse for a couple months while we wait for the snow to go away.

Time seems to pick up speed around the middle of April.  Farmers get antsy to get out on the land.  Their wives get antsy to get the men out of the house.  I take up a daily walk around the yard looking for signs of life … a first green blade of grass, the first buds on the trees, even a fist dandelion makes me happy in April; anything that shows proof of life.  Last fall I went crazy with over 100 tulips bulbs so spring was very colorful and rewarding this year.

Our front yard is a natural basin so there is always a period of flood with the snowmelt in the spring.  ‘Lake Hainsworth’ had been and gone enough for me to mow 80% of the yard before Mother Nature decided everyone needed to take a break from seeding and gave us three inches of rain in May.  Seeding was stopped for two weeks and I am now back to mowing around smelly swamp.  The moisture was welcome (especially for those of us who got their gardens in before it came) but it could have been better timed.  I say that like Mother Nature cares what I think; she does not.

Another sure sign of spring is our rise-and-shine time.  In the dark of winter I can manage to ‘sleep in’ until 6:00 or 6:30 somedays.  I know.  I know.  This is a dismal fail for a retired person but I literally can’t help it.  And, as if that’s not bad enough, when the sun starts getting up earlier, so do I.  This past month it’s been more like 5:00.  My mom always said it was the most peaceful time of the day and it turns out she was right … about just this one thing, of course.  I love my solitary coffee and game of Wordle.

These past few weeks I’ve been awakened even earlier – like 4:30ish - by my phone buzzing that there is a text.  It kind of spooked me the first time it happened because there is an unwritten rule in this house that you don’t call after 9:00 or before 8:00 “unless someone has died, someone has been born, or a house is on fire”.  Apparently, there is another allowable circumstance – If you’ve just spent the morning touring Italian towns and are sitting at a quaint little streetside café having lunch, this is a perfectly acceptable time to send pictures to your sisters in Canada.  The first morning it kind of freaked me out but after that it just gave me something more to do after I poured my coffee.

Sadly, the surest sign of summer has arrived.  Forest fire smoke stains our skies, makes us cough, and hurts our eyes … and we are hundreds of miles away from the real damage and destruction.  I sure wish Mother Nature would brew up another three inches and send it north.