Spring sprang

It feels like more than two-and-a-half weeks since I posted.  Things went from "all's quiet" to pretty busy, just like that.  And the weather's had a lot to do with it.  I've been patiently waiting for winter to arrive, which apparently it did a half an hour or so inland from here.  There's a downhill ski hill about an hour northeast that's supposedly pretty good (even by western mountain standards), which I'd meant to visit... but it's hard to feel like you're experiencing winter when the overnight snowfalls have melted by noon the next day, as they did through much of January and all of February.   And now it's too late to think about skiing; spring is irrevocably here.  Winter simply passed me by this year.

The first robins arrived approximately when I last posted.  The crows and ravens have been flying about with twigs in their beaks, obviously nesting.  Bulbs are pushing their way up and in the village (St. Martins proper), someone I know has heather blooming.  Intrepid locals are planting their gardens.  Yes, really.

There's so much to report, I hardly know where to begin.  But let's begin with that reference to the village.  What it signifies is that I'm starting to catch on to the local lingo.  Where I live is "over West Quaco", which, for Whitehorse folks, is approximately the distance from Porter Creek to downtown.  Psychologically, though, it's a lot more remote... say Burma Road down near the Yukon River to downtown.  "The village" is St. Martins, tiny as municipalities go; roughly 500 people inside the  boundaries, but probably a couple of thousand or more in the vicinity.  Going "to town" means going to Saint John -- a city of roughly 70,000 people, serving say 150,000 or so in the vicinity.  People from St. Martins area commute into town to work, and town is where you go for serious shopping errands or other business reasons, to see a movie or to attend a concert.  It has taken a while, but the verbal distinctions between town, the village and West Quaco are apparently taking root in my speech patterns.  I must be starting to arrive here.

On the topic of language, some will be familiar with the Maritime expression "oh my soul".  It's an exclamation of surprise, like "oh my goodness" or OMG.  I had expected to hear it used a lot, having heard it in the Yukon several times coming from the mouths of Maritime expats.  Maybe its era has come and gone because I've only heard it a couple of times since I landed here.  However, a week or so ago I heard another expression that I've never heard spoken aloud except maybe on "Road to Avonlea" or "Anne of Green Gables".  I've probably seen it in books, but never expected to hear it used in real life, because its era really has come and gone.  The expression?  "What a caution!"

My "Desk-book of Idioms and Idiomatic Phrases", published April 1923 and given me by my father who had inherited it from his father, defines a caution as "something alarming or uncommon".  Apparently it was a U.S. expression (as opposed to British).  Hence, "what a caution" means "oh my soul", or OMG.  The man who spoke the words meant them exactly that way, as an exclamation of surprise at something unexpected... and they popped out of his mouth spontaneously and earnestly, without a trace of irony or sarcasm or sly wittiness.  I know he kept talking, but all I heard were the words in my own mind: did I just hear what I think I heard?  You're standing in the 21st century, but aurally, you're back in the late 19th or early 20th.  It was a once-in-a-lifetime moment.

Okay, moving on from language... did you know that you shouldn't cut resinous trees like spruce or pine at the full moon?  The moon pulls the pitch out of the wood, so no matter what you do to it, it'll be sappy when you handle it.  This is especially important if you're going to be building with it; even long after it's been cut, you'll find that it bleeds sap.  Just saying... and now you know.

I don't know about the locals planting their gardens; seems a little risky to me.  For heavens sake, it was just St. Patrick's day yesterday, it hasn't even been Easter much less the May long weekend or the 1st of June, which I usually let pass before planting in the Yukon.  The garden centres don't even open until mid-April around here.  But the glorious sunshine and longer days, especially since the clocks sprang forward, have brought spring fever on hard.  The novelty of being able to plant this early is too much to resist, it seems.  I guess if the locals know you shouldn't cut spruce or pine at the full moon, maybe they know what they're doing with their gardens.  As for me, I have some herbs planted indoors that bask in the heat of the sunroom; that's as far as I've dipped my toes in the water so far.

There's a much longer springtime tale I have to tell, with photos to boot, but that's enough for one evening.  Stay tuned for next time: Maple Sugaring. *grin*