The first sign of Spring in Canada is the birdsong in the morning even before all the white has disappeared from a background of bleached light tan. A week or more later and night turns to day on equal footing and the humidity is up as below zero Centigrade nights, frost and chill vanish into the woods, lowland knolls and esker crannies. The first buds of late April show red on the hard maples, but the ash, birch, poplar, and even hardy oaks still slumber. Perhaps that is the lure of the Maple Syrup Festivals that abound in Eastern Ontario- a chance to see the first Spring hardies deliver their sweet spirits.
Maple Syrup Tap in the SugarBush
But winter never quite gives up and always send a Spring Shiver Snow Shower or two:
Shiver snow returns to the forest, coating everything Wet and White.
This year wet and white is followed by cool, wet and grey. The temperature is grudgingly up by a few degrees and buds finally start to appear as well as the dormant, dusty flies that are resurrected in warm window sills tbuzz and o breed like zombies and feed the returning birds. As well the mice no longer bother to lurk in the kitchen at night – its been dangerous business this year with Rusticat and a good old fashioned mouse-whack trap doing several micees in. In fact, the mice offerings to the carrion crow – scavenged up in the dead of winter – are now ignored.
Instead earlier dawns now bring fog mists which burn off with withgreater or lesser shades of transparency. Its still chill in the morning and so the Masters Golf Tournament in Augusta Georgia with its rolling green faraways, trees with leaves and flowers – this is the promise of what is to come in about a months time. But already people linger longer together – no need to get out of the cold. And Spring chores and clean ups start anew. Spread the fertlizer, clean away the brances, reset the mail box tipp by snow and plow alike.
Finally at the end of April and early May the tree buds make there grand entrance – as if to say what are you waiting for? Spring is truly here:
The Buds Spring Open in two or three days of warmer temperatures around 17C
And like a rising crescendo from Tchiakovky’s Rites of Spring, pastels burst over the fields and trees-
Woods and fields drenched in neutral hues suddenly clamor with verdant colors
As a ploughed fields run a streak of summer green –
It is a Spring color carillon ringing in the renewed year…
Causing even the heavens to rainz in new hues
While lush plantings gather in the green and growth
and farmers fields point to the new seasonal direction.
In town Spring’s warmth lingers longer and so the color and buds are further developed
And showing more of their true summer colors as with the Norway Maples
As if the bold sinews of Summer had arrived early
Or there was a required reminder of upcoming Fall colors.
But the sure sign of full Spring are birds nesting and the fragrances of flowers budding into full bloom –
The Daffies are always the first to brave any errant Spring chill…
Then the tulips with their parade of impossible colors
It is is a full floral flourish marking Spring’s class graduation