Gophers and a Frisbee

It is spring.  Can you doubt it?  We have seen a gopher and the boys are playing Frisbee in the Bowl.  Need there be more?  At +14C  I saw a tree trying to bud out.  "Not yet, not yet."  I warned it.  This is Saskatchewan.

Now we just wait for the babies.  No Frisbees needed for this.

The delicacies of a January Thaw

Admittedly we have not had much winter in recent years.  But this year we have seen the high end of the -30s.  Of course that's cold end of the thermometer, so that's the low 30s?  It confuses the brain at times.  But we all agree it's cold.  But today, it is not cold.  And with little snow to show for our season, now running into its third month, we have earth showing, and bits of grass.  I reached out to touch the delicate yellow green needles of a tamarack and found them as soft now as they are in the spring.  They peeled off into my palm and I raised them to my nose to inhale.  Sweet: earth and spring and warmth and peaceful afternoons.

Child's play

We had a spring snow dump on Saturday and on Sunday I arose to a foot (30 cm) of wet heavy snow.  Trundling out in my rubber boots, jammies, and my dad's overcoat, I knocked snow off the tree branch bowed under the weight to the sidewalk.  With my granddad's saw I cut up the honeysuckle, planted when the building was built about fifty years ago, that had given up under the weight. The saw handle gave way on the last branch.  Inspecting it closely for the first time in the 30 years I have owned it, I discovered it inscribed with the last name of my granddad's brother in law. Hummmm.  I helped my neighbour from down the hall dig out her car.  We agreed it was perfect snowman snow.  We returned inside to our separate abodes for warmth and rest. In the evening, dressed like a grown up, I ascended to the roof to make sure all was well.  It was. And there I build a snowman.  He was two feet tall when I said good night to him.  I named him Aloysius. Play like a child when life gives you the chance.

Today's Count

A spectacular dust devil, probably one foot in diameter showing itself as it crossed the bowl only in the flower beds.  Tree buds opening and thickening day by day, making shadows fulsome. Butterflies.  Birds practicing their calls. A man in a rainbow Afro wig, and a lime coloured car the shape of a box.

Today's Count

My ball cap, worn for the first time this year.  Rubber boots, the snazzy kind.  My yellow spring jacket, open.  Seven melting snowpeople in the Bowl.  A snow mountaineer, climbing to the top of the snow mountain visible from my office window.  Ah snow mountains.  I walked along the tops of ranges on my way to school as a kid.  Puddles.

signs of spring...or sanity

I am processing the new books. I think the women in cataloguing have been hording, for suddenly I cannot find the surface of my desk, or the chair, or sometimes even my work station.  But amid the pile, and as you might know I have moved from Law (one college) to Natural Sciences (ten colleges) so the topics I have pass before me are much varied now, I found a small but hope filled pile:

Handbook of Green Information and Communication Systems
Harnessing Green IT
Energy-efficient Distributed Computing Systems
Green Networking
Green Communications and Networking

Oh joy, someone other than little me has noticed this new marvel has a toxic underbelly that needs dealing with.

Today's Count

Ah sweet mystery of life at last you found us.  Spring.  Today it is here.  I sensed it yesterday, but today it is here.  It is not just the sun, we have, blessings, seen that daily now for almost a week.  It is not the puddles, they have been increasing over the week; the snow has only so much cold to keep the burning sun at bay.  It is, possibly the temperature combined with the sun, and the size of the puddles.  Or it could be that I walked on a patch of grass for the first time since October.  Brown, bent, soaked, but grass, with real soil beneath it.

today's count

Back to the crabapple grove.  It is snow free now and the robins are back.  I counted 12 in total.  Five were flying madly through the branches.  Three were squabbling over fallen crabapples, and the rest where spread about the grass with activities of their own.  Three crows, two lounging on the verge as though they owned it.  Who knows, perhaps they do.  A magpie.  A gum wrapper, and a construction peg.  The sky is grey, but at least nothing is falling out of it, knock on wood.  And I was walking around barefoot in my birkenstocks.

baseball hat season

Ah, you would never know we had a foot and a half of snow last week.  One of my readers in fact mentioned my lack of making note of it here.  It was indeed beautiful, mounds of snow like winters of old.  Like last year.  It took me a moment to realize why I hadn't noted the fact.  I was spending ever spare minute digging out the apartment block.  But since then the ground has come ever clearer to our view.  I planted tomato seedlings in my window.  I walked on Sunday afternoon in sandals, outside.  Today I wore my ballcap, my hat of spring and fall, to work.  It is the season.  And, in a warm corner of the Law College garden, pussy willows were budding out.

February spring and winter

Five days ago, on Sunday afternoon, I stood in our parking lot with my cello ,waiting to be picked up for an afternoon concert.  For warmth against the winter cold I wore a sweater and a ball cap.  This morning I woke up into the increasing early morning twilight to find the just gibbous moon hanging above the trees in the last of the dark blue dawn.  I donned long johns, jeans, shirt, sweater, boots, jacket, scarf, overcoat and my favourite -30 degree weather hat.  I went out, walked to the river bank, sat on a bench , and saw the cold mist rising off the river making the Broadway bridge look like a romance painting. And watched the moon fade into the morning sky.

Today's count

Spring, just passing through, but continuing the decades long banishment of cabin fever.  The last winter I actually had cabin fever was 1984-85.  Snow came on October 16th, 2 feet of it, and did not leave until nearly May.  In February, going mad, we cranked the heat in the residence, played the beach boys and ran around in shorts, drinking from umbrella-ed drinks and having water fights.  It was a great relief.  But there has never been a winter since that has been as bad.  And today, spring stopped by for a visit. On my walk to the crabapple grove there were five children, building a snow person.  From my angle she looked like a wide prairie farm wife with a pioneer bonnet. Two piles of ice chunks released from the road way while it was possible to dislodge them.  An eight car train calling its way across the train bridge.  The wind, moving the branches of the pines as though they were ships in the sea.

slapping season has begun

Where you to ask me my favourite seasons they would be: in spring:  spring, fall, winter, summer; in fall:  fall, spring, winter, summer.  In the crabapple grove today I can say that summer has arrived.  The mini vampires are loose with a vengeance and I slapped my way all the way to the river and back. I can also report, though, that the leaves are spreading out in their full pale green spring colour and sounding against each other as the wind blows.  The wind has also scattered the cloud cover of the last few days and blue is back and wide.

sign of spring

I just came from my coffee break. I went for a stroll in the crabapple grove.  I saw eleven robins.