Fall on the west coast of BC is the beginning of our 'rainy season', a period of time where it rains almost constantly from October to about April when warm spring weather really sets in. True, we do have one of the better Canadian winter climats (we don't, for example, have snow on the ground on Halloween and Mother's Day) but the rain can become really depressing after several months. Waking up at 7:30 in the morning to a still dark sky and a sheet of rain pouring from the sky, which will stay grey through the day until it gets dark at around 4:00 pm. That's not to say it always rains here. We're quite sheltered where we are on Vancouver Island, surrounded by the mountains in Washington and Vancouver and we can actually have some really beautiful weather sometimes. In late September and early October the leaves turn brown and crispy and the first few days when the frost covers the ground is really pretty. It's so cool to look out at the lake out in front of our house and see a sheet of fog hanging over it on cold winter mornings. I don't so much mind the days when it is freezing cold. It's the rain that I really can't stand after too long, and the terrible lack of sunshine. Sometimes in March or April when spring returns it's as if the sun is this forgotten object, lost forever in the oblivion and mysteriously returned. Spring can come quite early here (sometimes there are snowdrops in February!) but it's generally just winter playing with us. This year from January through to May we had a few weeks of warm-ish weather (as warm as you can get for January anyway) and then the cold gross rain returned for a few weeks, then it would be nice and sunny again. It did that for months, as if teasing us before the warm spring weather turned into the gorgeous warm summer (that turned into scorching hot later on) that we just finished enjoying. Really, I have no right to complain about winter weather. We don't have to run jumper cables five blocks from our houses to strat our cars in the morning, and we do get snowdrops in February and crocuses in March and then daffodils and tulips all before the middle of April. And we don't get as much rain as Seattle or Prince Rupert, we get a lot less by a long shot. Everybody can find flaws in the weather where they live. Too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, too sunny, too dark etc. But the fact is, we have to adapt to the environmental changes that our planet is going through. So what I'm going to try to do this winter, is suffer through the rainy days, and thrive on the odd sunny one. It's a much better way to live don't you think?
