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Spring is well along here in the north--the only places where snow remains on the ground now are shady areas and places which had had snow piled up deeper than normal (sliding off of the roof, or shoveled off the driveway) and grass and a few other early-waking plants are beginning to turn green here and there. These changes are, of course, caused by the return of the sun and while it isn't up anywhere near as long as it will be at mid-summer sunset today was officially at 21:12, which meant that when I looked out the window at 22:30 it was to see a nearly full moon filling a deep blue sky to the south. Therefore, of course, I went out for a quick walk--the sky to the north west was still a much paler blue, too bright for stars, so only one particularly bright planet glimmered in the sky. I love living in the north, and I love moonlight walks, but this may be the last one I get before autumn--soon it will be too bright all night for the moonlight to change anything.
comparing last spring with this one
May. 4th, 2014 11:30 pmI have mentioned repeatedly how weird our winter was this year, and how little snow we got. I just found this photo from a year ago on 21 April, 2013, which shows how much snow was left at the time:
Coincidentally, the earliest walkway photo progress I took this year was also on 21 April, as you can see, not a drop of snow remained on the ground:
It truly was a weird, low-snow winter. Our next door neighbour normally has a big bonfire in his yard for Valborgsafton (31 April), but this year, while made ready the pile of logs weeks ago, he opted not to light it, because the field was naught but dry grass (last year the grass near the fire was still snow-covered), and he didn't want to risk starting a runaway fire.
Our choir normally performs traditional spring songs at the big Valborgasafton bonfire at the University, but this year, since we are such a small choir, we opted to instead go do two indoor performances at some old-folks homes, to bring spring to those who can't get out and see it for themselves. Afterwards half of us (which is to five--it is a SMALL choir this year) came over to our place and sang for the neighbours at their bbq--while they didn't have the bonfire lit, they did have a small fire for sausages etc.
I also found this photo, from March 2013, which shows why we still had a decent amount of snow left at the end of April last year:
This year the deepest bit of snow in the yard was only about 1/3 of what we had left in March last year...
Coincidentally, the earliest walkway photo progress I took this year was also on 21 April, as you can see, not a drop of snow remained on the ground:
It truly was a weird, low-snow winter. Our next door neighbour normally has a big bonfire in his yard for Valborgsafton (31 April), but this year, while made ready the pile of logs weeks ago, he opted not to light it, because the field was naught but dry grass (last year the grass near the fire was still snow-covered), and he didn't want to risk starting a runaway fire.
Our choir normally performs traditional spring songs at the big Valborgasafton bonfire at the University, but this year, since we are such a small choir, we opted to instead go do two indoor performances at some old-folks homes, to bring spring to those who can't get out and see it for themselves. Afterwards half of us (which is to five--it is a SMALL choir this year) came over to our place and sang for the neighbours at their bbq--while they didn't have the bonfire lit, they did have a small fire for sausages etc.
I also found this photo, from March 2013, which shows why we still had a decent amount of snow left at the end of April last year:
This year the deepest bit of snow in the yard was only about 1/3 of what we had left in March last year...
