First Bloom

The temperature is rising and the snow is quickly melting. The wind blowing through the neighbourhood doesn’t have quite the same chill as it did only a week ago. The muck of March is being swept aside by the wet of April.

Although it’s technically been spring since March 21st, you would hardly know it until this past week. However, a couple of days ago we finally caught sight of one of the harbingers of the season: the first crocus pushing through the grass. Jen and I planted a sprinkling of these flowers on our front lawn last autumn so it’s nice to see that they survived the winter safe and sound.

Ottawa/Gatineau is a bit of a bizarre area in that the spring is very short. One day it will be winter and then, before you know it, you’ll be complaining about the heat of summer! It’s not like in Great Britain, which seems to have a much longer spring season (or, at least it seemed that way to Jen and I when we lived in Bristol way back in 2003-2004). This can make for some amusing scenes around here. People eating and drinking on patios with the last dredges of snow piled in the corners behind them is not unknown!

Note: I can’t take credit for this blog topic. I was inspired from reading another blog a long time ago (here and here) as well as more recently (here).