Spring has sprung

I've been almost afraid to think the thought, let alone utter the words or write them down for fear of breaking the spell, but I can't put it off any longer: we are having the most fantastic, wonderful spring in all the 40 years that we have lived in Ottawa. Today I walked along our street in strong, bright, almost hot sunshine; the temperature is 21 C; the tulips are out in full flower, the crocuses have almost finished blooming - they came out 2 or 3 weeks ago, along with the forsythia. Magnolia blossoms are the best I've ever seen on the little tree in our block, and on the huge one on the next block over. Only one phase in the life cycle of deciduous trees comes close to the beauty of maples aflame with autumn colours; that is the beauty of delicate, almost translucent leaves first emerging from winter dormancy. This year, that phase in the life of trees, or really their leaves, seems to have gone on for weeks. There is one in front of our apartment building, for instance, that seems to have been frozen in that delicate phase for weeks. Looking down from our eleventh floor windows on all the trees in this city of trees on a sunny afternoon with the sun shining through these delicate new leaves, they really are extraordinarily lovely. This year too the grass is greener sooner. It was a mild winter so there wasn't much winter-kill, and the warmth of the sun must have penetrated to the roots of the grass sooner than usual. The green is as rich, as intense, as in Ireland or the south of England.

I saw my first skein of northbound Canada geese before the end of February, and all the other migratory birds came back earlier than usual, established their territories, began nest building, several weeks ago. There seem to be more redwing blackbirds this year, but fewer robins; on my walk this afternoon I saw no robins and heard the lovely territorial call of only one. I'm half afraid to think about what all this means, because it's yet another set of signs and signals about global climate change. All the signs I've seen indicate that climate change is advancing faster than ever. It is probably unwise to boast about this great spring weather until we have survived the coming summer; if it's as much warmer than usual as this spring has been, we may be in for killer heat waves like the European summer of 2003. Of course I need to keep things in perspective;it's been colder than usual for this time of year in Eastern Siberia and Mongolia... Another local observation, then I'll stop. It's very, very dry. We had very little snow last winter and we have had hardly any steady, soaking rains this spring. The ground is very dry, the risk of forest fires is already quite high. I walked home with a neighbour who lives below us; she spent the afternoon over in the Gatineau farmlands, which, she told me, are already experiencing drought conditions. The ground where corn should be emerging is dry, dusty, unyielding. I'll take Wendy for a drive over the weekend (the first time both of us will be free of other commitments) so she can share in the beauty of this lovely spring on a slightly wider scale than the little slice of it that's visible from our apartment windows, although that is lovely enough to be true. I can't remember when we've enjoyed spring more, except perhaps one of our years in Edinburgh -- but that was ephemeral, truly beautiful while it was happening, but it lasted less than a week. This one seems to be going on forever.

Finally in this celebration of the season, today brought a further unmistakable sign of better times ahead than dull winter: the Canal is filling with water. In a day or two, the shallow pond a few hundred meters from our front door, a spawning ground for carp, will be swarming with dozens of fat mature carp, jostling and stirring the sandy bottom as they go about the serious business of reproducing their own kind. Like the lock gates will soon be doing, my cup runneth over.