Ahhh, the smell of sweet grass growing.  The beginning of colourful flowers emerging from the earth and filling their sweet nectar throughout the air.

The sap starting to move through the tree trunks and in turn the blossoms starting to form and open on the fruit trees, spreading more smells in the fresh air.

The birds have returned and have started building their nests. Robins are up early in the morning looking for big juicy worms that the dew drenched grass has tried to hide. The robins in turned thank us by serenading us with their melodic songs. No wonder this is my favorite time of the year.

BUT….

The rest of North America may be experiencing this, but for those of us on the Prairies in Canada we are still in the middle of winter and it doesn’t look like it will be letting up anytime soon.

People on the Prairies tend to focus on the weather. And rightly so. With the wide open land, changes in the weather can be seen from a long way off. The weather usually enters most conversations, especially for the farmers. For them, there is usually something to complain about. Too much snow/rain, not enough rain, too much wind, bugs are rampant, not enough sun, too much sun, and many other complaints. This year the main complaint with every resident is that there is too much snow! You get people saying “I haven’t seen snow like this since the winter of ’58.” “Yes, but don’t you remember the winter of ’54?” “Remember when we had to leave our vehicle on the main road so we could walk to it when we needed to go into town for groceries?” “If we left it in our driveway we would never have got to the road” or “The neighbours and we had to grab our shovels and shovel the secondary highway in order to get to the main highway–so that it would be possible to get to town?” But all agree that it hasn’t snowed this much in many, many years.

So instead of listening to birds singing and smelling the newness Spring offers, on the Prairies, we hear instead different sounds.  The groaning when family members wake up to see yet another day of snow falling, then yelling out “I am not going to shovel” or “I hate shovelling.” The roar of many snow blowers operating, city ploughs clearing the street with their annoying sounding back up horns so early in the morning, or yet another car stuck in the fresh fallen snow and gunning their engines trying to get out. How about the angry voices from each of the snow clearing companies because of the turf war that has happened because space is limited to where they can dump the excess snow? We can’t forget the stranded cars on the highways due to frigid temperatures or because of black ice and losing control or worse because of an accident. Yes, winter is with us for a little longer.

Winter will eventually leave us and Spring will come to the Prairies. The question is, when? The answer is a mystery. For me I think I will close my eyes and pretend Spring is here and try to imagine all that will happen once it does arrive. At that time I will be able to stop imagining and start to enjoy it once again.

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