Hey fellow Canadians, how's the weather out there? Wild, wooly, and weird? Here too. This has got to have been the strangest year for weather I have ever experienced.
It started with our summer: cold, rainy, and frankly, rather miserable. Living in a land where we are under snow about five months out of the year, we look forward to our hot humid summers here in Quebec. We take full advantage of the beautiful weather to boat, swim, have cookouts and barbeques, camp out, and host festivals every other week. Actually, we have festivals and parties all year because what French person doesn't love to get in on a big party? Anyway, I digress...
So, it started with our nasty summer. Let me tell you, it was lunch bag letdown. True, once every ten years or more we have kind of a wet, cool summer but you just don't expect that to happen. By the time March hits and we get some of those drippy days where the sun shines and the snow turns to ice granules and crumbles away in the +10 weather, we are all running around in short sleeves and sweaters, thinking about the spring and summer to come.
So I repeat. Summer. Yuck.
The fall we had was gorgeous but also a little odd. Sunny, warm, almost summer-like. I distinctly remember having a few days in the last week of October of +20C weather with sunshine and a week or so later, we got snow. We completely skipped the icky November stage of the year. You know that time when all the birds have flown away and all the plants have died. The trees are bare and it is damp and cold and grey all the time. Frost on the ground in the mornings and rain in the afternoons. And a great hush over everything as though the earth has become one mass grave for all the life and growth of summer that has now passed away. And the remaining living things are afraid to make a peep lest they too succumb to the frost and cold and deep sleep of winter. Streams cease to sing, the wind stops whistling its summertime songs and all is silent. If this doesn't happen where you live, you just received a very accurate description of what it's like.
So fall was lovely, but odd as well.
In December we had the yucky November weather. All the pretty Christmas card snow melted and the grey, cold, nasty weather set in.
A couple of days before Christmas we had a day of everything. Within an hour or two we had sun, rain, snow, ice pellets, wind, clouds, and stillness. Seriously, it was quite the show. The day before Christmas, we got our snow. A lot of snow! Then a week later, it melted. January looked like November. The thermometer went up and down like an elevator gone haywire. One day we would have snow. The next day it would be -15C, and the day after -1C. There isn't any adjusting or acclimatizing to that!
This month we had an early start to the maple season with a day or two where people were actually boiling sap. That is not something that happens during Valentine's Day week. But it did this year.
It has gotten moderately cold again and is snowing heavily today. I dream about scouring the riverbed and woods for treasures to gather and put on my website as I sit and look out my window, watching the flakes drift slowly down. A real Christmas snow. But who knows, with the weather we have been having, by next week I might be sunburning and wandering around barefoot on a quest for pussy willows.
At least our life isn't dull...
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