Apr. 3/75Sense & Nonsense

Spring is definitely in the air. It doesn’t really look like it, what with all the snow on the ground but the air does smell like spring. It is probably the faint aroma of old Fall things thawing out, but one can imagine it is really the scent of sap running in the trees, the subtle perfume of the pussy willows and the hint of green grass, as yet ungrown.

I haven’t heard of any robins having arrived back from their winter vacations. In other years they have been spotted as early as February. I did hear of one robin walking North on the Hart Highway at Christmas time. No one seemed to know whether he was a late leaver with a poor sense of direction, or a super early arriver. I imagine it was the former. There probably are a few birds with a Charley Brown type personality. In the people world, most of us CharIey Browns do the same things other people do. It just takes us longer and we end up with more bruises.

It snowed yesterday which apparently contradicts the rumour that it is spring. However, it was the wet, icky stuff which is supposed to speed up the melting of the old hard snow on the ground. When we were kids we would hear this phrase beginning mid-February every year:

“This is the snow that takes the other snow away”.

The old-timers in their wisdom all agreed on this. We would wonder at their reasoning at times as this new snow would build up higher and higher. They were always right though. Along about April all the snow would melt away. I remember thinking that the snow would probably be on the ground forever if it wasn’t for that last foot or so.Possibly it contained a special heat generating ingredient that the earlier snows lacked?