I'm sitting at the railway station ....

"I'm sitting in the railway station, got a ticket to my destination ..."


It's not the railway station, but once again the Calgary airport where I'm sitting, waiting to get to my destination. In four hours I will be on my way to Frankfurt for a two-and-a-half week visit to Germany. Only rarely in those thirty-plus years I've been living in Canada have I gone in the spring, and I'm looking forward to it very much.


Spring is the season that most severely got cut short for me short by choosing Alberta as my home. Here, it comes late, often only in May, and it doesn't take much time to linger: summer is hard on its heels. I have grown used to that, have learned to look for different signs of spring than when I lived in Germany. Then, my mother would often bring in the first buds of the snow drops growing close in a protected spot close to the house in time for the three-lobed white and green little bells to open for my birthday on February 1st. Sometimes they might have even been blooming outside already, chasing thoughts of winter away even if there was still snow on the ground. 


Once, many years ago, I found snowdrop bulbs in a seed catalogue in Canada. I ordered them and planted them in the most protected place I could find, on the south side of the house. How pleased I was when the first tender green shoots appeared the next spring! They bloomed only once, and were gone the next year, not made to cope with the harsh winters in our part of the world.


There are more hardy harbingers of spring, however: grape hyacinths and scilla, and, a little later, tulips and narcissus will grow even here. This doesn't happen until May or, if we are really lucky, late in April.and they don't stand out for long until summer comes along with its bold palette of colours. Still, it is always exciting to find the first spikes of these brave little fellows poking out of the ground, and since they have multiplied generously I don't feel guilty when I pick a steady supply of bouquets for the kitchen table.


Migrating birds, too, are slower to return to their summer homes in Alberta than they are in Germany. Geese in large numbers can usually be seen around the middle of April, and April 29th has often been the designated day when thousands of Sandhill cranes fly overhead on their way north. Starlings are among the first to find their way back, and I haven't seen any yet this year.


Still, there is the promise of spring even now: chickadees have changed their song from their bird feeder chatter to to the more melodious notes speaking of warmer weather and finding a partner, the drumming of woodpeckers establishing their territory can be heard regularly, and three times in the last week I have seen small groups of Canada geese: one goose on Sunday, three on Tuesday, and five today. It is only a matter of time now, and who knows, maybe when I come home at the beginning of April the treetops will be alive with the conversations of starlings and robins.


Meanwhile, I will get my first taste of spring in Germany, where the buds of the chestnut trees are swelling already, and yellow and violet crocus dot the lawns.