Has spring sprung!

Hesitate as I might, I think that we might be in for an early spring!!  That sound you just heard was the collective population of eastern Newfoundland damning me to hell for jinxing same.  I can't help it though, it seems to me that we might be over our winter hump.

As I write this, I can see patches of garden peeking through the mottled patches of ice and snow that cover our back yard.  Always a good sign this early in March.  We here in Newfoundland, for those that don't know, suffer from an affliction that I like to call "Seasonitis".  It manifests itself every year by us missing one of the four seasons that most of the world at our latitude takes for granted.

It can be different every year. 

Winter often doesn't really arrive and we suffer through a mire of rain, sleet, warm, cold in months when we should be schussing down slopes and snagging trout through jagged holes on ponds. 

Summer can pass us by also with no real fine weather in the crucial growing months of June, July and August.  There are few things in this world as hardy as a burgeoning vegetable in a Newfoundland garden.  Let's just say by harvest time, it has not only earned it's place on your table but your respect as well.

Fall skips us less often and as such is many Newfoundlanders favorite time of year.  It's about the only one that we can count on and like a favorite pet, it usually comes when expected, brings some lovely color to our lives, and we don't mind cleaning up after it.

Spring. Well what can I say about spring in NL.  It is the missing Spring that is most often the symptom of our "Seasonitis".  To say that spring is fleeting here is perhaps one of the world's great understatements.  A typical spring in NL doesn't last months or weeks. Usually we can pinpoint our spring to a 5 day stretch maybe in May, more often in June, occasionally in July!  Not our greatest time of year, but if the weather here were always the standard perception of beautiful, our population would more closely resemble that of downtown Tokyo than the sparse reality of 500, 000 souls on the world's 15th largest island!

Being who we are, we take it all in stride.  We like to say that no one lives here for the weather, which of course is not really true.  There are many reasons to bask in the glow of what is never a boring climate.  Our people are much like the climate.  You never know what your going to get and if you wait long enough it's sure to make you laugh!