I was looking at the Calendar on my kitchen wall this morning and noticed that, despite the weather here in St. John’s, Newfoundland, we will indeed be having an early spring this year; March 19 in fact. If this seems a little early to you, you’re right. In 2024 the sun will cross the equator on Tuesday, March 19 at 11:06 pm EDT, heralding the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere.
Why a day early? Because 2024 is a Leap Year, and that extra day in February, at least as far as our calendars are concerned, will give us an early spring. You might be thinking, doesn’t the first day of spring sometimes occur on the 21st of March? And you would be right. However, this is quite rare. In fact, there has not been a vernal equinox on March 21 in the 21st century, and there won’t be. The next time the sun passes over the equator on March 21 will be in the year 2101. I will be 136 years old that year, so I may not get to see it.
I am, like many people here in the more northerly climates, awaiting spring with breathless anticipation. However, regardless of what the calendar might say, anything that even remotely resembles spring as most people have come to know it is not likely to make an appearance in Newfoundland Labrador anytime soon. Just this past Friday, March 8, we had a storm that dumped more than 80 cm of snow on my little corner of the world.
I have to be honest; this was a little difficult to deal with. In fact, it had me on my laptop looking for condos for sale in Aruba. In the meantime, in the week since this storm we have had some relatively mild temperatures, and the snow has shrunk back quite a bit, though I don’t suspect we will be seeing crocuses on the front lawn, or the front lawn itself for that matter, anytime soon. All the same, seeing on the calendar this morning that spring is only four days away served to pick up my spirits a little; put a little “spring” in my step, you might say.
So, in our kitchen we have a small chalkboard towel rack. My wife, Kim, who is a food blogger and a rather proficient amateur chef, had originally hung it there to display the menu when she was preparing one of her amazing evening meals. However, in between its being employed for this purpose we had started using it for some of our favorite inspirational, motivational, thought provoking and amusing quotes. Feeling inspired as I was by this morning’s equinoctial revelation, I (with apologies to Bob Marley, who’s quote it was I erased, and to my wife who had placed it there) I wrote a simple little quote on our board that I felt was appropriate to the day.
Cheers!
Stephen
Life, Lunch, and Literature 
A great post and quote, and I feel like Bob Marley would approve of giving over his space for it. That’s quite a wallop of snow! We haven’t seen anything like that on the prairies for a long time. Here in Manitoba winter has been sort of “meh,” with not enough snow or consistently cold enough weather to enable winter activities like cross-country skiing, skating, and snowmobiling. So now that spring is approaching, I’m thinking, wait, what happened to winter, though I’m also excited that I’ll have my bike outside in the not-to-distant future.
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