The Eight Seasons

Hello, Gentle Readers.  I am confident that I have not yet covered this auspicious theme in this blog that is rapidly approaching it's first birthday, December 9, I believe.  I have been faithfully writing on this dear instrument of public literary expression every day.  EVERY DAY.  Sometimes twice in one day.  I also will be the first to acknowledge that with such frequent, fervent and faithful input (how's that for alliteration?) there might be from time to time a tendency of repeating myself, not a mortal but surely a venal sin for daily bloggers.  In which case I humbly beg your patient indulgence.  By the way, in December, to celebrate the first anniversary of Content Under Pressure, I would love to run original contributions from five guest bloggers.  That is one post per guest of up to, say, five hundred words?  Here is my email if I have any takers, especially from frequent readers (I do have frequent readers, don't I?) pajarohermoso@yahoo.ca.  Contributions will be welcome covering any theme or subject important to the guest, but it must be presented maturely and respectfully and if the writer is taking a controversial position then there must be cogent arguments and cited sources to back up and strengthen the argument.  Submissions will be welcome in English or Spanish.  Any Spanish contribution will be published as is with English translation following.

Now, on with the show:

I want to write today about the eight seasons we experience here on our Wet Coast.  Yes, I said Wet Coast, which it is, not West Coast, which it also is.  Some of you reading my blog from say Russia or China or France might not even realize how different our climate is here from the rest of Canada.  I live in the Balmy West.  Also known as the Barmy West, as we do tend to be a little bit odd out here. 

We don't get a lot of snow in this part of the country.  We even on occasion have had completely snowless winters here in Vancouver and other parts of the South Coast of British Columbia, my province.  Ask Uncle Google about snow in Vancouver and he will reply that here we average twelve days of actual snowfall, but often it doesn't even stay on the ground.  Generally we will have perhaps two to five days of actual snow on the ground every winter.  It is absolutely lovely when it falls and piles up and this city is transformed into something pure lovely silent and magical.  For the first twenty-four hours, I mean.  Then it warms up.  The snow turns to rain.  It turns into slush, flooding streets, paralyzing traffic and turning the fantasy into a wet slimy nightmare.  Fortunately it never lasts, well, almost never.  In 2008-2009 we were blessed with two months straight of snow into late February and spring was delayed by a month.  This happens perhaps once in forty years, well, maybe twenty.

Spring starts early and is our longest and after winter wettest season.  The first flowers begin to bloom in January: hellebore, snowdrops and the earliest daffodils and crocuses.  If the snow and frost stay away then we will be seeing flowering plums blooming in late February followed by the first cherry trees and forsythia.  It stays chilly though: a florist's refrigerator. 

For these reasons I propose that the southwest coast of Canada and Vancouver and the Gulf Islands be designated as having eight official regional seasons: Sprinter, which will begin February 15 and last until March 31; Spring will begin April 1 and end May 15, followed by Sprummer, May 16-June 30, then Summer, July 1-August 15, Fummer, August 16-September 30, Fall, or Autumn, October 1-November 15,  Finter (our season right now) November 16-December 31 and finally Winter, January 1-February 14.