Yuck! Spring in the Maritimes.

Yuck! Spring in the Maritimes.

Hi guys, it’s been awhile, you may have noticed that I took a bit of a blogging break? Well I’m back!!

I was going to call this post; Spring in the Maritimes is Super Shitty!! Because it is…like literally and figuratively shitty. But if I use swear words in the title, my posts get flagged by Facebook and they aren’t shareable, FFS, lol. So I went with yuck instead of shitty.

For those who have always lived here you know we don’t have great springs, it is what it is, you may not have even given it much thought? Having lived on the west coast for four years I now have something to compare it to. Here are my observations on spring in the Maritimes (for my American friends, the “Maritimes” is: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island).

The Sweet Smell of Spring?

My friend recently posted a throwback pic of a spring trip she took to the Netherlands where she rode a bicycle through the tulip fields. I bet it smelled delicious!

Spring in the Maritimes is not delicious, it’s shitty and stinky. Hear me out and I’ll explain it to you; when the snow and everything that was frozen in the snow all winter starts to thaw, the spring air is filled with the smell of dog poop and garbage.

Those who aren’t from these parts maybe thinking, why does it smell like garbage? Are Maritimers lazy litterers? (yes, I know that’s not a real word)

Sit back and let me paint you a picture; it’s a random Thursday evening in January, which is your regular garbage night. You carefully put your garbage bags neatly at the foot of your driveway before you turn in for the evening.

During the night, it’s snows, it snows a lot, which buries your bags under the snow. Before the garbage truck passes to pick them up, the plow passes, which means that your bags, under the snow are now pushed to the middle of your driveway, instead of being neatly to one side.

Now either the garbage trucks get pulled off the roads, if it’s snowing really hard, or they do pass, but they don’t see your bags that are now under the snow bank, which means that your bags don’t get picked up.

At this point your bags are still intact, but before you get up to go to work, the snow blower tractor that you hired to clean your driveway shows up and does what you’ve paid him to do. He blows all the snow that was in your driveway to the middle of your front lawn, which shreds your bags and propels your now shredded garbage all over your lawn.

Since it’s still snowing your shredded garbage gets covered by fresh snow, so everything looks white and pretty. And since it’s cold out, it doesn’t take long for your garbage to freeze so there is no smell. It’s alllllll good…until spring when all that crap starts to thaw.

Not just smelly, but also dirty!

If you’ve been to this part of Canada you know how beautiful and pristine it is here. The summers are super lush and green. Falls are beyond beautiful with all the colourful fall foliage. Winter is almost just as pretty…almost; everything is white and fluffy. And then there’s dirty, smelly spring.

It sort of makes sense that we need at least one crappy season. I mean it wouldn’t be fair to the other provinces if we were too perfect. Also too many people would want to live here and we don’t want that.

When the weather starts to warm up, the white snow banks get really, really dirty. I am not sure where all this dirt comes from? It’s a bit of a mystery. What I do know is that the snow banks get nasty and even though it’s warmer outside and they are technically melting, they look and feel like hard pieces of dirty ice…yuck!!

It’s also physically impossible to keep your vehicles clean during a Maritime spring. Some try to keep them clean and shiny, but it’s pretty futile.

Here’s proof that I did in fact get my car washed. I took a car wash selfie, just because. This is me, sans makeup, I woke up with super puffy eyes, I think I’m allergic to all this damn dust & dirt floating around outside?

Side note, my car stayed clean for maybe five minutes? I got splashed by another driver and then the dusty dirt stuck to the wet spots. 😩

Multiple Personality Disorder

Either spring has multiple personalities or it’s just a big fat tease? How else can you explain the crazy temperature differences from one day to another, to another…to another?

Last week we had a few days that where -12ish Celsius, not including wind chill. Then two days later it was +12, it makes getting dressed very challenging.

March 23 marked day three of our first round of fake spring, it got up to +16, but winter was not done with us just yet.

They announced rain and then snow for the weekend; ahhhh spring snow. We usually get one or two big snow falls in April. It’s a little game spring likes to play with us, just because she can. We have a saying here that April snow helps to melt the winter snow. I am not sure if there is any scientific truth to this, or if it’s something we tell ourselves to make snow in April more tolerable, lol.

Did we get snow on the weekend? Yes we did!! Just when we were hoping that spring had sprung, it was just fake spring! We will get five to six fake springs before summer.

Friday night we had heavy rain, thunder and lightning, which is odd for this time of year, but odd springs are to be expected around here so we just roll with it. After the rain came the ice pelts and then snow.

 

Spring!

No matter how shitty it smells, how messy it gets or how many April or May snowfalls are thrown at us, spring in the Maritimes is a symbol of hope. It means that we have survived another winter and that better times are on their way!

When the days get longer and warmer and the temperature cracks 10 degrees, you’ll see Maritimers outside walking, riding their bikes and washing their cars. Some in shorts, with legs so white they have a bit of a green tinge to them.

So even though the air smells like shit and there is shredded garbage all over the place, we kind of love spring, it means we’re that much closer to summer. Ahhh those three weeks of summer are truly awesome!! Lol.

I hope you are able to get out there and enjoy this shitty, dirty, smelly season!

muah!

Liette

Feel free to like, comment or share on Facebook!