It's Spring Again.....

This is what we woke up to this morning. Happy Spring Everyone!

Still more Mexico pix to come - stay tuned. At least looking at Mexico is a bit more fun than looking at snow! Joe just came in from shovelling and says 8 to 10 inches and up to a foot where it drifted. We were pretty much down to bare ground in the sunny areas yesterday... Oh well - this too shall pass.

More Spring - Flowers! (30)

Spring Flowers

It seems Cousin Marj started something! Captain Chris sent snow pix to Marj, then she sent them to everyone else, they ended up on my blog (see Spring Snow posting #27). Then Uncle Fred sent some. Same thing. Now we're into Spring Flower pix, so thought I'd start a new posting.

Apparently spring has arrived in Canmore. Marj sends crocus pix with the following comments:


Dad forwarded me an astounding email yesterday, from his naturalist friends the McIvors, who had found a few little crocuses blooming in Banff on the 21st. Dad was amazed, as in a lifetime in the Bow Valley, the earliest he ever remembered seeing crocuses in bloom was on his birthday (March 27). So all this inspired me to go out after church today and check out the Lady MacDonald benches, which is where I usually find the earliest crocuses in Canmore. And sure enough, I found some! When I found the first few like this last year, it was on April 8th! The first one I found was the little one still wearing her fur coat, and I thought that might be it, but then I found the others, braving the cold, further down the trail. They're still pretty small, and hugging the ground for warmth, but even so, I guess it really is spring!

Yes folks, I really do have relatives that keep track of things like the "earliest crocuses."

Here they are - and in case you are wondering - these really are crocuses - they are the wild kind, not the nice tame kind you find in your garden. The wild ones are sort of furry - I could imagine them driving around in a '60s VW microbus.






So then Cousin Sandy sent a few more crocus pix from Naniamo. These are tame variety - more streamlined - perhaps tooling around in a '65 Mustang. OK - work with me here - my point is that the "domestic" and "wild" crocuses have different sorts of "personalities" - if that's even possible for flowers. But I digress.

Not only did Sandy send the pix, she also demonstrated her considerable talent as a poet! Here, for all the world, is a poem by Cousin Sandy:

Spring has sprung,
The flowers are growing.
Grass getting too long
It needs a good mowing.

The crocus is finished
And the daff almost done.
The rhodos are starting
To burst forth in the sun.

When the leaves have come out
And the blooms are on show.
We'll send spring on
To those buried in snow!

And here are the pix!







Once again - happy spring everyone!

Easter Sunday (29)

Happy Easter, Happy Spring, Happy Long Weekend - Take Your Pick

It was a nice day here in Calgary - a bit overcast to start, but nice. Eric and Monique came over for dinner tonight - and I managed to get a decent picture of them. They are illusive.

Then we went for a drive after dinner. We went west a bit. There was snow over the mountains so we didn't get any good pix looking west, but we did see a pair of geese nesting up in a tree! They were about 20-30 feet up. Joe said it was unusual to see geese nesting that high up - either that or we would be getting a lot of rain this year!

So here are the illusive and unusual couples.

Spring Snow (27)

Spring Snow!

Many Days in March

Canadians may feel alienated from each other for a lot of reasons, but we have one thing that binds us, and that's the weather! And, depending on where you live, there can be snow at any time of the year. I've been in Calgary since 1975 and in those over 30 years (wow, that long!!!???), it has snowed in every month in at least one year.

Cousin Marj asked Cousin Chris (otherwise known as Captain Chris - he's a real captain! - pilot for Jazz Air - very cool!) for some evidence of the massive snow fall down east. Captain Chris lives in Montreal, so he forwarded some pix of his place - buried in snow (on or about March 9). I imagine it took hours to dig out!

This is another Captain Chris pix - taken from the cockpit.

Then Uncle Fred weighed in with a few of his spring snow pix - also from Montreal...

I especially love the snow man across the street from Fred's place.

As a way of expressing a common bond among all Canadians, and especially my eastern relatives, I thought I'd share some pictures of our Calgary spring snow! We woke up to overcast sky and falling snow - a blizzard! - on Sunday morning (March 16). By the time we got up, the blizzard had passed, and it was starting to get sunny, but, as you can see, we were left with quite a dump of the white stuff!

See - this is a massive drift on the shed! Look closely - it's got to be at least three inches deep!

And this is the garage roof. We were worried about imminent collapse!

It took Joe minutes to dig us out! Look at it all!!!!

This is the view down the street. It's a good thing this was a Sunday blizzard. It will take the rest of the day for everyone to dig out - look at all those neighbours frantically digging away!

And our guard dino is buried....

A hard working Joe - still at the digging - this is at least 5 minutes after he started...

This is a couple of hours later.

That's Canada Olympic Park across the river - the place where all the snow is...

So my eastern friends and relatives - I just wanted you to know that we share your pain. Snow - it's the stuff that binds us.

Now, lest you think I'm tempting fate with a bit of teasing... I was bootless for about two weeks. I forgot my winter boots at Pam's in Abbotsford. It actually WAS snowing when I left, but of course in Abbotsford the crocuses were out - no snow. So I left my boots in her closet while I was there and forgot to bring them home. As they were old and I intended to replace them anyway - I actually did. Which means that I've cancelled out any bad luck I may have created with my teasing by having new boots. Surely if I'd not bought them, I would really be needing them!

New boots! (And as further evidence of the depth of our Calgary snow, note the fact that they would just barely be above my ankles - more than adequate for around here!)

Seriously, Calgarians think a "blizzard" is 3 inches of snow. In fairness, it can get frigging cold here - and with "wind chill" even colder - but we rarely get the kind of snow they get down east. Only one year in all the years I've been here do I remember getting serious snow. Mostly it's very dry dusty snow.

And also, seriously, we probably will get at least one more snow storm before spring comes for real - which if we're lucky will be before June. After all, in Calgary, we have 2 seasons: winter and Stampede Week!

PS - Not to put too fine a point on it...

Cousin Shirley submitted the pix below from her stomping grounds on the "wet coast" - with the following comments:

We can see snow on the tops of our mountains here, but haven't had any actually at ground level for quite some time - although it is still pretty cool for this time of year, + 4 and +5, rather than our usual +7. I thought I'd send you all a little bit of Spring. I am not gloating. Because every time I gloat, we get a snow storm or a hurricane or something. But I took this picture today.

[Today = March 21]

If it was me, I'd gloat - because, hey - I've got the new boots! We'll see how lucky they really are in the next few weeks! :)

Happy Spring everyone!