Spring has sprung, the grass has riz, I wonder where the flowers iz.
That hoary old kids’ rhyme always makes me wince, obviously for the bad grammar and spelling, but also for the sheer irony: we wait all through the long and dreary winter – from the dark days of the December Solstice [Northern Hemisphere], through the cold and snow of thirteen or more weeks of winter weather; but then Vernal Equinox arrives and we think, hunh? where is the miracle of Spring? It’s a big disappointment, at least in frigid Ottawa (temperate Victoria may be another matter). It doesn’t arrive all at once, much as we wish it would; it lags and limps along, alternating between promise and betrayal.
I think the Farmer’s Almanac had it right this year, at least for Ontario. We can expect a long and harsh winter, they predicted, and we did. If you’re nostalgic, as I am, the winter of 2024/5 was an old-fashioned Canadian winter – cold, lots of snow, and snow shoveling. The Rideau Canal Skateway was open, intermittently, for 63 days, well above the annual average of ~50 days. There was little talk and wringing of hands in these parts of global warming or climate change, just pleasure of a traditional winter.
I’m not sure what the Almanac had to say about the arrival of Spring – they are a bit cagey, rather like astrology, they use obscure and oblique language signifying anything the reader wants – but if a long winter it implies a late spring. But when? Here’s their 2025 map showing the variability of Spring in Canada:
(Note, this weather map doesn’t say when Spring actually arrives.)
I think Wiarton Willi may have got it wrong this year – the Bruce Peninsula, and I dare say most of Ontario, was cloudy on February 2nd: he didn’t see his shadow, thus portending an early spring! Punxsutawney Phil on the other hand emerged to a sunny day and thus predicted six more weeks of winter, or in northern Pennsylvania, never as harsh as Ottawa, six weeks of hard sledding.
Despite the doubtful accuracy of Groundhog Day prognostications, I have long extolled the wisdom of Wiarton Willi and generally venerated Groundhog Day tradition. (For proof you can visit my AFS Consulting blog site and be entertained by the 30 years of cartoons (obscure and profane) you find there. I annually produced greeting cards celebrating the event, sent to 500 former and potential clients and associates. I still get fans complaining to me every year on February 2nd that the bleeping varmint was a fake and a fraud, and why am I not still turning those useless cards out each year? (Oxymoronic perhaps but, Good question.) And some complain that they used to look forward to receiving those unique cards each year celebrating their birthdays. Who knew so many of my fans were born on February 2nd?)
Not only did my festive cards serve as a unique marketing device for AFS Consulting, they also aligned with my agnostic and pagan spiritual orientation: I don’t believe in a higher power that watches over his (their?) creation (us!) but I do honour the long history of humanity trying to figure out what the heck was going on. The ancients may not have used aroused groundhogs as prophesiers but their sagacious priests noticed (at least in the northern hemisphere) that daylight grew awfully short just before winter seriously set in, and then the days began to lengthen until one day, 91 days (13 weeks?) later, there were equal amounts of daylight and dark. Equinox. But did they call it the beginning of Spring?
[If you get your calendars out and start to count the days between solar events you can get awfully confused. You’d think those solstices and equinoxes would be evenly distributed throughout the year: 365 days in the year divided by 4 (seasons, or periods between solstices and equinoxes) gives 91 apart. But in 2025, Equinox falls on March 20, 89 days after Winter solstice. Hmmm.
The Druids calculated that the halfway point between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox would be about 45 days (close) and they (well, the pagan Celts) named this Imbolc. But did Imbolc fall on February 2nd? Maybe not, because the ancient pagan Celts didn’t use the Roman Calendar – it was imposed on them by Caesar. And those proselytizing but clever Roman Catholic priests, who took it one step further, deliberately conflating Candlemas with Imbolc[1],[2], determined February 2nd as the holy day for both. I’m not sure if the Druids were happy about this but it surely confused the groundhogs. Now, if you’ve still got your calendars out, count the days from (2024) December 21 to (2025) February 2: you get 43 days; then count from Feb 3 to March 20: you get 46 days. The upshot of it all is, at least in Ontario, and maybe the rest of the northern hemisphere, groundhogs everywhere who rouse themselves on February 2 will always get it wrong – we’ll never get an early spring because spring will invariably arrive 46 or 47 days after February 2nd, not 42 days (six weeks), or even [true] Imbolc (45 days after February 4). So, when is Spring?
I don’t know about you but I’ve pretty much given up on this confusing Celtic/Christian contest. Mathematically, the Vernal Equinox establishes the arrival of Spring on the 20th of March, but our lived experience tells us something else. We may not be able to trust ‘the science’ but there are other harbingers of note in March: the 15th (the Ides) and the 17th (another gift of the Irish).
The Ides may be significant, not so much as it was the means by which the Romans noted the progression of the days in the month – it means only mid-month, nothing more prophetic than that – but because the Ides of March has come to signify a warning, something not heeded by Julius Caesar on his way to the forum. But now, at least in uncertain Ottawa, the Ides of March may warn of yet one more winter storm, or two, before we can actually relax and finally admit of the arrival of Spring in mid-April.
As to March 17, so far as I know there is no connection between St. Patrick and the arrival of Spring, except perhaps as one longed-for excuse to celebrate, something.
The Christian Holly Day of Easter is definitely a metaphor for spring and rebirth of all those living things lying dormant over the winter months. The trouble with Easter is that it is a moveable date established by the ancient semitic scholars using a lunar calendar, and not easily reconciled with the Roman solar calendar. So, some years Easter comes in late March and in others in early to mid-April; it is quite useless in predicting the arrival of good weather in the frigid northern latitudes, except coincidentally. After all, in Eastern Ontario, spring-like weather can come as early as late March or as late as early April. (In the tropics of course, people don’t have this obsession we northerns have anticipating Spring – there is no Spring, or any seasons really, only 12 months of hot and humid weather, or perhaps we can say, hot and hotter weather).
All these prophesy mechanisms may be flawed, even my misplaced faith in Wiarton Willi, but for me the surest sign we have of impending Spring is the switch to Daylight Saving Time. The second Saturday in March, the sun sets at ~5:30 in the afternoon, but then on the Sunday, it sets an hour later. It’s a miracle, and a true sign that the days are getting longer. (It’s a delusion of course – we pay for it by having the sun rise an hour later, around 7:30 a.m. But cheer up, there are longer days ahead.)
But I digress, regardless of when Spring arrives by the solar cycle, the actual arrival of the greening of the environs (at least in Ottawa) will be late this year. I have two feet of snow still at my sunny south-facing front porch and while it is rapidly receding (the snow, not the porch), the heads of my tulips and daffodils are not going to emerge for a while yet. Hell, we’re likely to have two more snowfalls between now and mid-April. I have no hope for the crocuses and hyacinth – the squirrels dug up and devoured the bulbs way last October, mere hours after I planted them. (Any surviving bulbs get their sweet heads chopped off as soon as they dare to bloom.)
An iconic scene, but falsely implying a typical Spring day in Ottawa. Ha!
As much as we yearn for the end of winter, and pray for the sudden arrival of Spring, we know the actual experience is a gradual thing, frustrating even. I’m beginning to think Spring is not a real season, unlike Summer lasting more or less three months, and Winter lasting more or less four months; Spring may be more of a process than a season, it has no constant character, only variability of change and transition. We don’t have winter on March 20, and the next day we’re flooded with spring flowers. No, we have March 20, then 40 days of hope and despair until May finally arrives and we can finally call it Spring. But don’t plant out those tender annuals and veg just yet – there’s still the risk of frost till June!
When is Spring? Who the hell knows.
Doug Jordan, reporting to you from Kanata
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[1] By this calculation overlaying the Julian calendar, Imbolc should fall on February 4. Christian Candlemas celebrates the Presentation of the baby Jesus at the Temple, 40 days after his birth, (arbitrarily determined by Pope Liberius in AD 354 as December 25) i.e., February 2.
[2] The Germans for unknown reasons involved hedgehogs with Candlemas celebrations and German settlers brought this tradition to Pennsylvania, and whether or not the varmint sees his shadow on February 2, 4 or 5, Spring won’t arrive until six weeks and 3 days later.
