Sometimes on a dark, damp day in the middle of winter, I think about how wonderful it would be to live on a tropical island where you’d never have to face the doom and gloom of a west coast winter.
Even in other, colder Canadian cities, they seem to get more sunshine than we do. We just get a lot of grey and rain. And more grey. And more rain. This is why many of us refer to it as the “wetcoast”.
For people who move here from other parts of the world, the hardest thing to adjust to is the grey. And the rain. It’s depressing.
That’s why I like to imagine waking up to summer every morning, and living in shorts and t-shirts all year in a perpetual paradise.
But then again, if we didn’t have winter, I’d miss one of my favourite seasons: spring.
Spring means so many wonderful things: new life, new hope, a fresh start. It gets just a little warmer every day as spring approaches. The bees start to wake up, the birds begin to nest, and the air is fresh with new scents and warm feelings. It’s literally like coming alive.
When I was little, my mother used to note the date of the first crocus on our wall calendar every year. “Oh! It’s a day earlier this year!” She’d smile. And then she’d note the first daffodil and the first tulip.
On one of my walks the other day, I was so happy to see a bunch of little yellow crocuses blooming that I took a picture of it. A block or so later I bumped into someone I knew who said she had just sent a series of spring flower pictures to her relatives back east.
We “wet-coasters” love to do that, don’t we? Torture our friends and family back east with flower pictures, boasting of our early spring. We even have an official flower count here on the island, and we love to let the rest of the country know every daffodil-ic detail. Just to rub it in. This year the Greater Victoria Flower Count runs from March 9 to March 16.
Most of us on the Island know about it, but if you’ve never heard of or participated in the flower count, well, it’s exactly what it sounds like. You go outside and count flowers and then you send your numbers in. There were 65+ billion blooms counted last year. On their website, they even have a count down to the flower count.
It feels like a count down to spring, really. When I last looked, there were 29 days, 22 hours, 7 minutes and 53 seconds to go. Sigh.
Of course, real spring starts on March 20th, but sometimes it does show up a little early just to tease us. It can even show up for a few days in February sometimes. Our last couple of weeks have shown us a few lovely sunsets and sunnier days.
But then, all of a sudden, snow can rear its chilly head too…
I don’t know about you, but I need spring really badly this year. Like many out there, my family have experienced some great losses over the past few months, on top of all of the negative news that’s happening in the world right now.
And what with more and more people coming down with COVID, it has been like living in a bad dream. I now know many people who’ve been infected with COVID since the Omicron variant has taken over. Sadly, I even know one person who has died from it. It’s been another very cruel winter.
So how about it spring? Why not show up a little earlier this year just to perk us up a bit? Bring on the daffodils and tulips, the nests full of tiny chirpers, the sun and the new buds. Let’s get back to golf and picnics and … spring cleaning?
Okay, wait …
Irene Jackson
