Mixed Messages from the Sky

“Spirit Bear“
Orig­i­nally uploaded by Mus­sels.
Thanks to Matt for this appro­pri­ately metaphoric photo…

Another thing I’m going to have to get used to here is the sea­sons. Not just the qual­ity of them (i.e. W = Win­ter = WET). It’s the length of them. I see by the cal­en­dar that today is Feb­ru­ary 25^th. I know Feb­ru­ary, quite well, or at least I thought I did. Feb­ru­ary was the cru­elest month for me; it was the depths of despair. The sole hol­i­days of the month were Valentine’s Day and President’s Day, and if you’ve ever fol­lowed this blog you know my feel­ings about the pink-hearted and romance-inflicting hol­i­day. As for President’s Day, in recent years its just been a grim reminder of how far that insti­tu­tion has fallen. That was the Feb­ru­ary that yearly vis­ited me.

Vancouver’s Feb­ru­ary says ‘Hah!’ Besides the ces­sa­tion of the rains (at least for the past week and a half or so), it has also seen the first har­bin­gers of Spring. Yes, you read that right. Spring is indeed arriv­ing in the sec­ond month of the year, tip­toe­ing in like an early the­atre attendee. I have proof: A few days ago I saw a for­sythia bush show­ing yel­low blooms. Today I spied a small daf­fodil. It was shel­tered by a bush, to be sure, but there it was. In Boston daf­fodils aren’t due for another 3 months or so. Just in case those clas­sic sign­posts went by unno­ticed, the Cal­i­for­nia lilac’s pur­ple flow­ers, which have the most amaz­ing smell later on (some­thing like cin­na­mon, par­tic­u­larly after a light rain or morn­ing dew), are out every­where. Granville Island is run­ning a lit­tle fes­ti­val this week­end called Win­terup­p­tion, which sug­gests that Win­ter will con­tinue after the events are over with. I wouldn’t bet on it. I’d say its the inter­rup­tion is really a farewell.

I note that there is a sec­tion of another web site, Japan-Guide.com that is ded­i­cated to the bloom­ing of the cherry blos­soms in Van­cou­ver. It does men­tion that there are some species that do begin bloom­ing in Feb­ru­ary here.

Before all of my giddy Spring Fever gets too out of hand, there is one sober­ing fact: It’s cold out­side. The tem­per­a­ture today was about 3°C and a few very small snowflakes have been falling here and there. Not the dead of win­ter, but noth­ing remotely ver­nal about it. It’s just started rain­ing now, and rain is pre­dicted for much of the com­ing week. In the words of Emily Litella: “Never mind”.