Where in the world is Spring?

It is eleven pm, and Orion is low in the western sky already. It seems like just a short while ago that he rose in the east at midnight. Now, his feet will soon be touching the horizon, and he’ll start to slip away. This, at least, is a sure sign that the year is progressing and we are into spring, just like the much longer days. The sun set at 8:24 tonight, 13 ½ hours after it rose.

But what kind of spring is this? Right now the temperature sits at -12 Celsius, and there’s a good chance it will dip as low as last night, when it was -18. Daytime temperatures rose all the way up to -4 in the sunshine, and my weekly measurement of the average snow depth for Environment Canada showed 40 cm – five centimetres less than last week. Unlike last Monday, when everything was soft and slushy after almost a week of melting, I had no trouble with snow coming in at the top of my boots: it was cold enough that the snow easily carried my weight. 

Oh, we are all getting a bit tired of this! When we came home from our journey south a couple of weeks ago we had much more snow than when we left on the first day of March, but only a few days later I saw the first harbingers of spring. A familiar raucous cry made me look up in the Costco parking lot in the city, and indeed, there they were: four gulls, their gleaming white bodies in stark contrast to the deep blue sky. The same day a big flock of starlings lifted off our neighbour’s trees, only to settle down again right there, almost as if a wind gust had stirred them up. A day or two later we saw two geese flying overhead – there was no doubt that winter’s icy grip had been broken, or at least loosened. 

Temperatures soared to +8, a couple of times even +10, roads briefly became muddy, but soon cars were followed by the inevitable plume of dust. A big puddle appeared at the edge of the lawn, and water in our basement – all was as it should be. If the snow would continue to melt at this speed - not too slow, but not too fast either – it would be perfect. 

But of course it is never a good idea to project too far into the future, to conclude that weather might behave as expected, which means, of course, in most cases ‘as desired’. The middle of last week brought a marked drop in temperatures, and on Thursday and Friday it snowed. Fortunately predictions of up to 15 centimetres didn’t quite come true, but it was enough to cover the raggedy snow banks with an immaculately white blanket of new snow.

Ruefully we have returned to snowshoeing in the field instead of taking Leo on walks along the road. I’m sure he appreciates it, since he can run wherever he wants that way, and he doesn’t even break through the crusted surface of the old snow under the thin layer of new. Conditions are perfect for snowshoeing, actually, and we should probably simply enjoy it while it lasts. 

The starlings are still around, though I haven’t seen them join chickadees, redpolls, blue jays, woodpeckers and nuthatches at the feeder; they must have an alternate source of food, and of course this is nothing new for them. I feel for the geese, too, brave souls. Whatever might induce those first couples to break away from the main flock and seek out this bleak winter landscape where food is scarce? 

Pussy willows are not afraid of the snow either

But, as Emily Dickinson says in her poem, ‘It will be Summer – eventually’, and I can be patient a little longer. Tomatoes and basil have come up in their seed boxes in the sunny living room window, and the solar lanterns, some of them barely poking out of the snow beside the front deck, spread their glow for much of the night, a sure sign that the light has indeed returned. 

In the meantime, we will at least have enough wood for cozy evenings by the fire ...