So how mild a winter was it anyway?

A local person said to me recently: "Didja know the ground never froze this winter?  Yep, it was such a mild winter that nobody went into the vault."


Huh?


Turns out that there's a cold storage vault beneath the floor of Huttges' store (built in 1899), where bodies can be stored for burial in the spring, once the ground thaws.  This winter, no body went into the vault; that's how mild a winter it was.


And oh my soul, the frost heaves in the roads!  Last Friday, with four people in the car, we were just about airborne.  The roads to Saint John and Sussex, rollercoaster rides at the best of times, have been even more thrilling to drive since February, with some stretches positively corrugated.  How to know you live in a cash-strapped province: when, weeks overdue, the highway maintenance folks finally, grudgingly, put up the tiniest possible signs to mark only the worst of the life-shortening, car-bottom-scraping bumps and hollows.


I know; I said this post was going to be about maple sugaring.  Hold on; it's coming.