It’s finally here.
Spring, I mean.
After another brutal and seemingly endless Canadian winter, the second one in a row to hammer Toronto, the harbingers of fine weather are finally beckoning.
The sun is stronger and warmer, its blissful rays intensely yellow. Dormant lawns have turned bright green.
Blue bells, as well as a profusion of weeds, have sprouted. The shiny leaves on trees have magically unfurled, their yellowish buds scattered on roads and sidewalks.
And throughout the city, cyclists and  joggers are out in force again, taking full advantage of temperate days.
It’s wonderful.
Goodbye to misery.
Less than three weeks ago, Toronto was unsparingly cold, the cityscape a study in monotone greys, somber browns and cobalt blues. The sky was often cloudy, the trees were bare and bleak, the grass was scrunched up and stunted, and the earth was lifeless and hard to the touch.
How, I asked myself, could lovely flowers be coaxed from this inhospitable soil?
Spring officially arrived on March 21, but you wouldn’t have known it on most days. Toronto was in winter mode and the vast majority of Torontonians were still bundled up in thermal coats, scarves, hats and gloves. At night, the temperature plunged below zero.
The ravine near my home was still largely covered in a blanket of snow resembling permafrost. And in my backyard, the edges of the lawn were coated with slowly retreating slabs of ice.
By about the second or third week of April, the first real signs of spring were in plain sight. With days now slightly warmer, or less cold, I changed into my leather jacket and stopped wearing gloves and a scarf. A woolen touque, however, was still necessary to ward off icy gusts of wind.
Around this time, I began cleaning up the backyard. With a rake in hand, I collected mounds of dead leaves, twigs and debris, the detrius of foul weather, and deposited them into black plastic bags. Having filled them to the brim, I dumped the bio-degradable contents into the ravine.
With the soil still moist from a long and dreary winter, I turned the earth in my vegetable and herb garden in preparation for another growing season.
With the risk of nocturnal frost having passed, I planted Italian parsley and basil. Once the warmer weather is here to stay, at least for the next few months, I’ll plant cherry tomatoes.
By the first week of May, the peonies and the ferns –my favorites — surfaced.
As I write, the lilac trees are just days away from germinating, and the John Downie crab apple tree is ablaze with white blossoms, gladdening the hearts of my wife and I.
Dandelions, the king of all weeds, have made their annual appearance.
In the interests of maintaining a decent lawn, I’ve uprooted them. I like the look of dandelions in a wild meadow, but not in my manicured yard.
As I walked around my mid-town neighborhood, I paused to admire the exquisite pink blossoms of a mature dogwood tree, a perfectly symmetrical row of red tulips and a carpet of blue bells.
Cycling to High Park, I dismounted to take photographs of the Japanese cherry blossom trees in full bloom. The vaporous white cloud they create is ethereal. Regrettably, the delicate petals will fall to the ground within a week, leaving the trees looking unremarkable.
In Trinity Bellwoods Park, as I observed, the warmer weather attracts new mothers pushing baby carriages and draws legions of young people in their 20s and 30s emerging from a winter of hibernation. They lay out blankets on the grass, chat, worship the sun and crack open picnic hampers, enjoying life in the open.
Being in a northerly climate zone, Toronto offers its citizens only several months of reasonably good al fresco weather. The smart ones embrace summer keenly, knowing that the nip and chill of autumn and the merciless frigid blasts of winter are not too far around the corner.
